The deal to allow me to buy back the car if I accepted the money offered in compensation was made on the phone with my insurance company. I then phoned the repair centre where the car had been stored to make arrangements to get the car back home. I was told that the salvage people had been authorised to pick up my car just about an hour before and that must have been about the same time I was haggling with them on the phone!

I got in contact with the salvage company and told them they had my car and not to do anything silly with it, another call of a similar message went to the insurance company. Somehow I don't think I even swore at anyone! Just who authorised the removal of the car for scrap is difficult to say. The insurers blame the repair centre, the repair centre blame the insurers. As the insurers had the car in their "care" it is their fault anyway. I was assured that my car has not been in any way further damaged and will be delivered to me f.o.c. and the car was indeed returned  30th December 2003, over six weeks from when this farce started.

While all the arguments went on, the car had remained in storage at a repair centre in Sale (South Manchester about 12 road miles away from my house). The morning the car was "snatched" it was transferred to a yard in Glasgow ! From there by some means it found it's way to Carlisle and then back to me in Stockport. Quite a journey.

And here can be seen how well the car had been looked after, remember this has been my property all along.

When the original offer was made and the car was written off I was told that the chassis was bent. The part that "goes over the right hand rear wheel arch was distorted" and the car would need to be put on a jig to check and pull out the damage if the car was to be repaired. (This was all explaining how the car was a Category A  write-off which can't be repaired etc etc)

(Ok so I am not an "expert engineer", but now I have the car back it has given me the first chance to do my own inspection. Something else I should have done before anyone else went near it and I should have taken plenty of photos too.)

This is what I found.

Now it is difficult to see how anyone would know all this without removing the trim inside the boot to have a look. Perhaps these people have x-ray vision like Superman, who knows? To me just an ordinary mortal, I could find no evidence that the trim had been removed since the car left the factory in 1994. I suppose I could be wrong, maybe they leave no evidence and put all the dusty materials back in the various nooks and crannies that it fell out of when I took the trim off.

Now here is the first interesting point, there is no chassis member that "goes over the right hand rear wheel arch" ..hmmm.

There is also no evidence at all of any wrinkling, distortion, separation, of any structural or any other parts at all. If you look at the inner arch the sound deadening pad (made from a bitumen type material which does have little creases in it and some finger marks from whoever stuck it on there in 1994) is on a perfectly smooth metal arch. Look below, so where is all the damage?

The floor of the boot is in a similar unmarked condition. The attachment points of the towing bracket show no signs of distortion and did not move from the impact.

Here is the boot floor over the right hand chassis box section, looks perfect.

This photo shows the main impact area. (It was getting a bit dark so not very good quality) It has bent the right rear wing or quarter panel, the boot lid also took some impact which bent it, also the boot lock striker mounting (on the vertical panel rising from the boot floor) bent and pulled the top of the panel with it. The rear cross member behind the bumper appears to be straight and ok. I will remove the bumper to check.

The actual repair estimate for this is over £4,000 ! Does this look like that kind of damage?

To summarise 

Fairly cosmetic damage. A little bit different from the category A write off we started with?

Next Page. Some more of my "heavily damaged" written off car.