@barrett - Any update on situation ... did you narrow down your Shop and get an estimate yet? Or even 'estimate' of when they can actually get it in the shop to remove bumper and look closer? Hopefully your anxiety has been dropping as days pass. Remind yourself that once it's done/repaired and you're back in the seat hearing that Flat-6 all will be right again.

 

Painful situation. Likely the hit and run learned the wrong lesson since she wasn't charged.

Again, painful, but this should be on Carfax - it is the reason Carfax works well, and protects us all.

 

Yes, thanks so much for asking. Here's my update:

1. I took the car to a number of body shops in the Houston area, two of which are Porsche certified. All gave me a preliminary estimate within a few hundred dollars of each other (between $4500 - 5000). The projected work entails replacement of the bumper cover (bummer, because that involves successfully matching GT silver paint, which I'm wary of), maybe replacing the actual bumper that sits behind the bumper cover, and a few other odds and ends. My car is a cabriolet, and the cab top still operates normally, and all other panel gaps seem normal. This indicates--again, at least preliminarily--that the damage is relatively minor. One guy told me that the cab top is easy to knock off kilter in an accident, so the fact that mine is still aligned correctly and works is a good sign. All that said, the big caveat here is that they may find more significant damage when they take the bumper cover off. Unfortunately, every shop is jammed up, and so I can't get the car actually opened up and worked on until late June.

2. In the meantime, I've been driving the car and trying to enjoy it, though I still get annoyed when I look a the few crinkles in the bumper and the few areas of chipped paint. The most significant damage is right behind the license plate (which is still paper temporary tags). So if you were driving behind me, you probably wouldn't notice any damage at first glance; but if it were parked and you looked at it, you'd see the various areas of damage.

3. As for the 22-yo girl who hit me, I gave her the option of paying out of pocket or calling her insurance. When she heard the estimate amount, she opted to go through her insurance. She works at a thrift shop and seems not to have any money (though she lives with her mother and siblings). Turns out--surprise, surprise--her insurance had been canceled for lack of payment prior to the date of the accident. And while she got coverage from a new company, such coverage came into effect after the accident. So bottom line: she's got no insurance that covers this accident. Good times. She does admit fault, however--for whatever that's worth.

4. So where things are: I'm driving my car around, waiting for its turn to get worked on at the shop, and figuring out what I should do. My kneejerk reaction is to want to pay out of pocket myself to avoid any bump in my insurance premium (which I think would occur if I made an uninsured motorist claim--Texas is not a state that prohibits insurance companies from raising rates after its insured makes a claim even where the insured is not at fault). But the downside is, what if the shop starts working on the car and then, midway through, finds an issue and the fix turns out to be, say, $20k? It's not likely, but after reading a few threads here on Rennlist where seemingly minor damage results in $40-50k in repairs, I can't say it's impossible. In such an instance, I'd want insurance (and diminished value) coverage. So I'm going to speak to my adjuster (who I had already contacted even before I learned the other driver's insurance had expired) to see what options I've got. Ideally, I could take the "out of pocket" path and then have the option of switching to the "uninsured motorist claim" path if it the damage merited it. But I don't know if I can switch midstream like that, so I will talk to the adjuster.

5. What a pain in the ***.

 

Drive the car while you process to take the driver of the other car to small claims court - don't accept that she should not be fully and financially responsible. If the car actually belongs to her parents, go down that path.

Grrrrr.

 

like she didn't know her insurance was cancelled ?? give me a break!. those crap insurance companies want their premium and start threatening/riding you as soon as you're late. *i think* she knew dam well she had no active coverage. she knew she didn't pay her premium at the very least. and what happens when you don't pay your premium?? hmmm?

sorry to hear and hope you find an agreeable path forward. i for one would still go after her and/or her parents. but then i'm a rather vengeful/spiteful person when someone does me wrong.

best of luck

 

You summed it up well as a PITA.

Your “what if’s” are important. Legally, if you were ever to sell the car, representing it as never being in an accident would be fraud. And karma states that as soon as you would fix it off the books you would be in another accident.

I’d still file the claim with your insurance. It’s the cleanest and the most conservative approach and don’t forget diminished value.

 

I wouldn't take the chance and just go through your insurance, especially since it was not your fault. I have been in a bunch of accidents that were not my fault and reported it and my insurance did not go up.

Of course she knew she did not pay her insurance, that is why she was crying.

 

Is it too late to file a police report? Fleeing the scene and not having insurance are pretty serious and would ensure that she got the message not to do it again.

 

This is a sign that a better car is out there for you. The hunt is part of the challenge and will make the find even more worthwhile. Don't give up the fight! Most women don't understand the bond between a man and his machine. Keep hunting' and don't give up 'til you find the right one! (Took me two years to find mine, and it was well worth the struggle, the hunt and all the bad examples before finding the right one. (I learned a lot about what could go wrong while searching). GOOD LUCK!!

 

Hmmm what’s the above reply about?

 

We got rear-ended in our 992 after one month of ownership. Probably a ten-mph impact. I drove the car home.
It was the bumper cover, support, crash bar, muffler, clamps and . . . both catalytic reactors. One tail light got a tiny crack in it, enough to cause fogging.

$24,000.

 

It's unbelievable how fragile these cars seem to be. Fender benders shouldn't be $20k - $30k. That's such a bummer about your 992 being hit. I hope the other person had insurance.

I'm now going through my insurance (uninsured motorist coverage). Unfortunately, they told me this could raise my rates, depending on the amount my insurance pays out (and is unable to recover against the other driver). I inquired about diminished value, and my adjuster tried to tell me that my state (Texas) *prohibits* an insurer from covering first-party diminished value claims. That sounded off to me, so I researched it. The law in Texas is that an insurer is not obligated to cover a first-party DV claim (the policy behind this is logical: they don't want someone using insurance as a piggy bank--if you're short on cash, you can't just ram your car into a tree, have your insurance pay for the repairs to where your car is back to normal, and then also have your insurance write you a check for diminished value). HOWEVER, Texas law is different when it comes to situations where a third-party hits you and has no insurance. In that instance, you can make a claim on your own insurance (a first-party claim under your uninsured motorist coverage) and also seek DV from your insurance. Of course, this does increase the amount my insurance will have to pay out, and to the extent they can't recover it from the girl that hit me, up go my premiums. I might just shop around for insurance at that point. What a pain in the ***.

 

I would be a bit skeptical of anything coming from your insurance company, they only care about their own interest and they have already demonstrated this by telling you your not eligible for a DV claim and the threat of increased rates if they can’t collect.

Personally I would not fret the possible increase in rate unless you think you have a sweetheart deal as is. Having said that, if they do increase your rates and you start shopping for someone else, they’ll know you had a recent claim. This happened to me years ago when I was in a sports car on the interstate and a SUV in front of me swerved to avoid the largest piece of tire tread I’ve ever seen which I couldn’t avoid. Made a claim which was paid minus the deductible and maybe a year later we were combining our house and car insurance and they noted a “recent” accident where I was at fault and my other company had to pay the claim. At first we were baffled but remembered the encounter with the tire tread, explained what had happened and the company took a different tune and gave us a policy.

I know on the homeowners side there are adjusters you can hire to help represent you to make sure your insurance company is being fair, so I might check into that if you perceive your insurance company is not telling you the whole truth.

It seems if you did need to shop for new insurance it would help if the woman that hit you hag been charged with both the accident and with not having insurance at least you would have a documented “my side of the story” to tell any new insurance company you were trying to get a quote from.

Good Luck.

 

It's not that the car is so fragile; the catalytic reactors alone were $16,000 of the total. The collision also took out the muffler. Also, I would say that the impact in our case was more significant than OP. Though there was no sheet metal damage, replacement of the bumper cover requires that the rear fenders be painted and blended so that the paint matches.
I saved the original bumper cover so I can show any future buyer exactly what the hit looked like. I could have taken the muffler as well but the cats had a core charge.
This work was done by the Porsche certified shop in our area, affiliated with our selling dealer.

 

garthg,

I disagree.

Rear end bumper smacks cannot cause that level of damage unless there is poor engineering - almost the very definition.

The cost of the components being replaced is also out of norm and unforgivable.

While I like how my car drives, other cars drive well, also.

I am sometimes concerned about Porsche owners being so stuck on their brand that logic can't make it into the discussion space.