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Would you buy an insurance write off?

I did and here are my thoughts, warts and all

3y ago
3.3K

So last year after my car died of old age I was forced to purchase a replacement second hand car. When I bought my Mercedes 10 years ago it cost me £6,700 for a 3 year old A Class, I bought it from a used car supermarket.

This time around as I work from home, I did not see the point in spending out many thousands of pounds to buy something to sit on the driveway for 90% of the time. So I researched cars in the usual places, autotrader, ebay, local papers, other internet sites etc and in the main you either pay out loads to get a decent car or you pay less and get something that has massive mileage on it. Very few Vicor's wifes cars for sale right now, which is annoying.

So, I ended up buying a five year old Ford Fiesta 1.4 Zetec, it was a Cat C insurance write off and had been repaired. I bought it from ebay and all I had was the description and the pictures to go from. The ebay seller's history told me he had repaired five other Fiestas previously and the feedback from the buyers were good. I won the auction at £2,350. My car had a replacement front wing and some paintwork done to put it right. I collected with cash and the car is immaculate, it has 30K miles on it and feels like a new car to drive. The list price for my car is well over £4K so I have almost got a half price car. The mileage is low as once a car is crashed, it can sit around for months while the claim goes through and then is disposed of.

Cars are written off vary easily here in the UK, Insurers do not want the liability of them, so get them off the books asap. You can find cars that have been written of because of flood damage or theft etc. The trick to it is to know the reason, if you can get photo's of what it looked like pre-repair that is also good. Lastly know the classification system for your country. The UK system has just changed, It used to be Cat C or D that you could repair and put back on the road, its now evolved into new codes.

so in the year I have owned my car, I have had one major fault occur, I adjusted the steering wheel and the steering column dropped right down so the wheel was in my lap, I tried to lock it back into place and it fell out of position again. I contacted Ford and local Ford specialists and they wanted £200 to tow it in and quoted £700/£1000 to have the upper rack replaced.

I bought a used upper rack from a breakers yard for £50 and also a haynes repair manual. When I undid the lower dashboard cowling, I found out that the whole system is held in place with one bolt and that bolt was missing! I found the bolt and after applying locktight, I torqued it down and the problem was solved. Was this caused from the accident or had it worked lose over the years, I don't know the answer, but I was thankful to have saved myself the repair cost.

Would I do it again? Yes if I am still working from home and want basic transport I would. If I used the car every day and wanted something that would hold its value better, I would probably buy a full service history car from an auction house. All I know is that I got a run around for a couple of grand, so that's cheap motoring.

If you have any views or experiences on this, please feel free to enter your thoughts in the comments section.

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Comments (3)

  • It’s “write-off”, not right-off! 😂🤣As in “written off”.

      3 years ago
    • Thank's Edward, I have amended the Title, I am dyslexic so miss the obvious at times.

        3 years ago
  • Hi congratulations - your post has been selected by DriveTribe Lifestyle Ambassador for promotion on the DriveTribe homepage.

      3 years ago
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