Stolen and Recovered Photos: Need Advice

The 308 put up a tough fight, look what it did to the cop cars front crash guard, bent it good. Hard to believe that POS thief was driving around with the targa top off in a red stolen Ferrari for a few days unnoticed.


You'll need a front clip used or left fender at least, along with a hood and valence, might check for slight frame tweaking needed. I'd just take the U.S. bumper off and shocks and replace it with a euro. I'd agree $10-15k.

You may consider finding a donor car that has motor issues or other mechanical problems for <$15k or so and using the parts needed off it and selling the rest when done to help recoup some of your costs.

Good luck

 

It would seem the quality of repair depends on what you can wrangle out of the insurance company. That's always a fight. Obviously the harder you push the better things will be. I'm sure this has been discussed at length previously, so forgive me if I'm stating the obvious. Personally I would not dump too many $$ into it above and beyond what you can get from insurance.

 

First thing I would like to point out, is that unless, or until you make any deals with your insurance company, the car is yours, not thiers. They have no right or privelige to your property until you both agree to something. Secondly, insurance or not, the suspect is responsible. He is the one who did the damage, and you have every right to pursue a claim against him, IMO. And that has nothing to do with car insurance. Just that he is and should be held responsible, as are the other two idiots. If I read all these posts correctly, the guy caught with the car still left two other suspects or more? All should have a civil suit smacked against them for any and all suits that can be brought (pain and suffering, loss of use, damages, etc.). Take till it hurts and keep taking.

I know some like pristine cars, and want repairs done to factory spec, but this is where I feel insurance companies are being bent over a barrel. And again, there are shops that do good work reasonably, and shops that do garbage work for high dollars. Dane, if your willing to accept something less that perfection, and pursue these creeps in court for extra damages down the line, you may still have your car and a fat enough check for your body kit. Its not what I would do with your car, but hey, it all works. Certainly a lot better than seeing it get a salvage title, which I have always felt was BS anyway.

 

We're not so "lucky" (perhaps it's unlucky for future buyers?) in California. CA DMV VC 11515(b):

"(b) Whenever the owner of a total loss salvage vehicle retains possession of the vehicle, the insurance company shall notify the department of the retention on a form prescribed by the department. The insurance company shall also notify the insured or owner of the insured's or owner's responsibility to comply with this subdivision. The owner shall, within 10 days from the settlement of the loss, forward the properly endorsed certificate of ownership or other evidence of ownership acceptable to the department, the license plates, and a fee in the amount of fifteen dollars ($15) to the department. The department, upon receipt of the certificate of ownership or other evidence of title, the license plates, and the fee, shall issue a salvage certificate for the vehicle."

It's possible that if the damage was a marginal salvage situation, e.g. the insurance co offered the owner the option, you could argue that it is repairable and avoid this since it seems to be up to the discretion of the insurance co. But in the situtation I mentioned, totalling w/o salvage retention was chosen because of this regulation.

 

THere is always the option of purchasing a donor car:

http://tinyurl.com/c68gc

If you have the time (I know that you don't have time now) you can use the parts needed to repair yours and make a fair bit of your money back selling the rest.

The upside is that you know the parts will fit. The downside is that it is a true pain in the arse.

I did this with an Alfa a little while ago and won't do it again. But I made twice the money I spent on the car and got many needed spares for another car.

 

pics of my 308gts i bought from a member here. i paid $9500 for the car wrecked as is and it had frame damage. i am sorry , but i seriously doubt that your front frame tubes are not bent given the severity of the damage. here are some pics of the old GTS including what it looked like after i pulled it out and relined all the body lines. I DID NO PAINT WORK ON THE CAR ! its the original paint still. as i said in my PM , let me know if i can be of help. my advice would be to take the insurance money and keep the car. sell the car to an enthusiast and buy another 3x8 series car that you can jump in and drive. its going to take months of work and lots of your free time to see that the car gets fixed right, and its still a high mileage injected 308.
edit : the pics are compressed to fit on fchat so they look a bit "squashed".
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A 288???

That is an AWESOME solution to this ordeal!!! Excellent idea. Wish I would have suggested it earlier!!

I LOVE the look of those. Nice!!

 

One fault in your premise is most of us have "agreed value" policies, not "market value"...even so, my 308 was set at $37k, and they estimated the repairs at $20k, and they got $13k for the car at auction....figure after auction fees they neted $11k, they should have fixed my car....oh well. The Chubb adjuster says they have a fixed formula, and they were not going to waver....most of the time it works out for them....obviously not in this case.

 

OK, but if you substitute "agreed value" for "market value" in the equation, then I'm not sure what changes. It's all relative to what they think they have to pay out; the only difference being that with "market value" you negotiate the value after the accident. It's also quite possible that specific insurance companies have fixed %'s; but they're just playing a statistics game by trying to average out the salvage/auction value % over a number of accidents versus trying to make it work out economically on each accident. I suppose it may also depend on how good the insurance co thinks their claims adjustors are as to how much discretion they're allowed.