What do you think it would take to total a 2020 86 with 3.4K miles ??
 

Facebook marketplace is full of such BS .

Fender and door, my a$$ !

I got in an accident that involved a door replacement and rear quarter panel damage that only cost $3k to repair according to insurance. Car was a 2018 Miata RF with only 33k.

Must of bent the frame and or had multiple air bags go off or something.

I had my rear quarter, trunk, bumper, and a few other things all replaced for $12k last year with 15k miles on my car (2020) and it wasn't considered totaled by insurance. No airbags deployed.



This ad is sketchy

That hood/front gap is waaaaay off.

Oh cool. The Virginia Sate Police inspect cars and determine registration type. They must have a whole department of experts.

front bumper is still not straight.

i actually looked into this a while back, and it's something that varies heavily from state to state, as well as specific insurance company. some, it's as low as 50% appraised value, others will repair up to 100% of appraised value.

i believe the saying is "not all salvaged cars are rolling trash heaps, but all salvage cars have had work done"

it also depends on how marked up the quoting repair shop is on the repairs. for a really high end shop for an insurance estimate, it'd be hard to even paint a fender and a door for under $10k. $15k would be roughly half value, so throw in an alignment and replacement a-arm or something plus labor would kick it over that $15k threshold that some states would total a $30k car out at...

there could also be towing/storage fee's, and rental vehicle fee's on top of that as well that the repair shop is quoting as part of the repair costs to account for the insurance to take their sweet time to approve work and consume precious working space in the shop...

if one were seriously interested in the car, take it to a body guy for inspection, and go over it with a fine tooth comb. there's a proper way to repair everything that's 100% safe and OEM-approved to meet OEM crash ratings, and there's the cheap way to do things to make a quick buck.

I mean it’s all related to the appraised value of the car. And given this had to be relatively recent given the model year, that car was worth a lot when the insurance company totaled it. To give you a datapoint, I just sold my 2020 premium manual with 32k miles for almost 28k to Vroom. No insurance company is going to total a car unless they have to given the loss they are likely to take. So I am guessing the damage was significant including engine and frame.

could also be tied to the reliability of something structural as well. cheap to fix, but they don't want to warranty the repair

All in all there is something very fishy about the description and info in that ad. Could be s deliberate attempt to deceive, a simple lack of understanding in how bad the damage was, or a combination of the two.