Quote:
Originally Posted by fledonfoot
If the car books out at $16,000 fair market value, you're looking at needing something like $13k in total damaged to write that thing off.
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Not necessarily. Delaware is a Total Loss Formula state. They don't use a percentage. In a TLF state, the car is totaled if:
Cost of Repair + Salvage Value > Actual Cash Value
Suppose for argument the salvage value is $8K and the cash value is $16K. The cost of repairs (for full service repair, not PDR) would only have to exceed $8K for the car to be considered a total loss.
An insurance estimate is going to include the full repair cost of replacing damaged panels and repainting, not PDR. This car was in a hailstorm that smashed out the rear window. I'm guessing the pics can't really show us that every body panel on the car was damaged to some degree. If the rear quarter panels were damaged, the estimate would include some welding. If the interior got soaked, the estimate may include the cost of replacing parts that might be reused. That's a lot of money to repair a perfectly drivable car.
So it wouldn't surprise me at all if the repair estimate + the salvage value exceeded the cash value, and the car was legitimately totaled and sent to auction. But it also wouldn't surprise me if every ding in the car could be repaired with PDR given enough time in skilled hands, making it a golden opportunity for a reputable shop to buy the car at auction and make some money on it with a rebuilt title.