Heads up. . .
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From: North Yorks
Originally Posted by Dracoro,May 1 2007, 08:13 AM
The Focus crash thing was a good point I thought. Yes many cat-Ds are fine, however the public are quite ignorant, many sell their cat-Ds saying "minor" damage but a cat-D is an economical WRITE off. Now on some cars the damage is minor (old cars) and some are fixed well etc. The damage will be considerable on any newish car, never minor that's for sure (yes there are exceptions, 
but these are rare ) However, the article made a good point that: A-make sure the cars are checked out properly, it may look "right" but what lurks underneath? and B-MOT's are often work jack-all (I would have liked to see if the MOT stations that passed the car were reprimanded - maybe behind the scenes they are?), you still need to check over the car.
Yes, some people will now say No full stop to a catD car (these are the sort that probably wouldn't check it out properly anyway so the consumer is protected). The others that are still interested in a 'bargain' will just check them out better, also a good thing. The only losers will be people selling dodgy crap repaired cars.
but these are rare ) However, the article made a good point that: A-make sure the cars are checked out properly, it may look "right" but what lurks underneath? and B-MOT's are often work jack-all (I would have liked to see if the MOT stations that passed the car were reprimanded - maybe behind the scenes they are?), you still need to check over the car.Yes, some people will now say No full stop to a catD car (these are the sort that probably wouldn't check it out properly anyway so the consumer is protected). The others that are still interested in a 'bargain' will just check them out better, also a good thing. The only losers will be people selling dodgy crap repaired cars.
But they skewed the reporting to infer that all cat D's are death traps, and with dealers, bodyshops and sprayers charging increasingly high prices on insurance repairs the reality is that this kind of bodge job is decreasing, as structurally safe write offs are easier to come by.
I was chatting to a sprayer about this on Sunday, he has the unit next to the workshop my Fury is in. He does a nice line in resprays for a mate who puts genuinely repairable cat D's back on the road, the panel guy and the sprayer work weekends for the repairer and take a cut of the resale. All legit, all above board and they do mainly 4 or 5 year old family cars which the insurer has written off as uneconomical because of panel damage and the cost of dealer parts such as rads and ancillaries.
I agree that a cat D should only be approached if you can be sure of what caused the vehicle to become uneconomical to repair, but the programme didn't give the full story.
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