My wife hit a deer and our Prius has visible damage to the hood, front clip and fender. Still driveable. Repair estimate $3800. Insurance wants to total it. No deductible. This car is the best I have ever owned. I have maintained this baby since new. After the odo stopped at 299,999 i kept track of the mileage using the trip meter between oil changes. It has about 330,000 miles and I've recently put some $ in front hubs, struts, cat converter, muffler, etc. I want to keep it as I think it still has many more miles left in it. Battery pack is original. 12 volt battery replace two years ago. What do you folks have to say?
Past results are no indication of future potential, especially when it's a high tech car in a region that salts the roads in the winter. 20 years and 330k miles was a great run. I say hang it up and get something fresh.
Get the money from the insurance company. Negotiate hard for them to just give you the money without signing title over to them. If you have the car in your possession just keep it. If not, work hard to get it. This can be done. It took me 6 months with GEICO. Also negotiate the monetize any rental car payment available. This will all take work but if you succeed you'll keep your car, keep clean title, and can fix it yourself with parts from a scrap yard. This is assuming no expensive frame damage. Then who cares if it lasts 10k miles more or 100k. Its a car you know. You need the car in your possession and you need to fight the adjuster's lowball settlement offer.
Vehicles always towed to you're house or business. Never to a lot! Ever. Golden rule ..... You can buy a rolling chassis for almost nothing to fix the mess made do give up you're title for a substitute. If they want to issue a salvage title . Make em issue a new one don't surrender the lost title. It's missing. You hit an animal so no one to sue and pay ... It's a 20 yr old car they have no interest except to common good which is to get old shiet off the road . Their definition of old shiet. Or the governments. Don't fall for it
just buy it back from your insurance company, damage is only cosmetic and parts can be outsourced from junkyard or facebook marketplace.
Last December, i was in a similar situation. Someone ran the red light and i had to take the hit. Insurance totaled it but i had 3 estimates to fix for 1500 less. It had 270k on it original battery. I really wanted to buy it back and repair it. I went to go see what Tampa hybrids had and i found a 08 with the highest trm level and all the options with 89k miles on it. It didn't make sense to keep my old car. I did buy it back for 900.00 and sold it for 3k. I am very happy with my new prius. Thanks to covid, insurance gave me more money then what i originally paid for my old prius. I could have gotten a different prius from tampa hybriid for less money and not dipped into my savings but i liked the car fax on this one the most and and its low miles so i paid a little bit out of pocket.
Thanks for your input. I settled with the insurance co., kept the title, and will have it repaired. My out of pocket will be $800. With this I will get two new OEM headlight assemblies. Now, since the totaled tag will be attached to the VIN, carfax, etc., will I have problems insuring it? I can document all repairs made.
Ask your insurance agent. The hoops you need to jump through will vary from state to state. If your goal is just to obtain liability insurance and you are making essentially cosmetic repairs it should be possible to meet that goal. Insuring the vehicle itself may not make sense even if it is theoretically possible, since it is worth only a couple of thousand dollars and the insurer may charge higher rates on it because it once had a salvage title.
it varies from state to state but your car's title will still be clean (since you did not surrender it) and if there are no police report of the accident carfax will show nothing. The only caveat will be that you can't have it insured for comprehensive coverage to the same insurance company, only liability coverage. I assume this is just a recommendation from an agent since they won't pay you full coverage again because of the buyback. Insurance will gladly accept high premium from you for comprehensive coverage. You might be able to if you switch insurance company (I doubt insurance companies share claim records of the car) I've asked my friends about this stuff and their cars show as clean, in my case my friend who bought the car I bought back from insurance came up with a clean title when it was transferred to him.
