Car totaled, buy back salvage/repair, sell parts?
 

Thank you in advance for any advice, suggestions or ideas. My car was recently in a "small" accident. T-boned at the front right fender at about 20mph. Apparently the wheel took much of the impact which damaged some suspension parts causing cost of repair to go up dramatically. The repair estimate is at ~18k and I'm currently negotiating buy out value with the insurer. Major new parts include suspension parts, a wheel/tire, front bumper cover, radiator and ancillary parts, fender and a new soft top as the roll bars put impressions on the plastic back window.

The car is a 1999, 123k miles. The front 2/3 of the car was recently painted due to a bumper abrasion and it looked immaculate. New rubber around doors, new front bumper, new hood, new emblem. The car has 7,000 miles on a new transmission and new clutch. All other maintenance has been done, 90m service, water pump, oil separator, new brakes and more.

Depending on cost, I could consider buying the car back from the insurer as a salvage title and attempt to repair. I could also try to sell to a local Porsche Indy for parts. Any ideas?

I'm also considering replacing the car with a similar car, but it's uncomfortable knowing that any replacement car with 60-90k miles will soon need the work i just completed (tranny/clutch).

Thanks again for any constructive comments to help me navigate these decisions. Any questions? Pix attached.

$18k for that? Are you sure the car didn't sustain front frame damage? There is a nice gap in between the front fender (wing) and the door. The hood is ok?

The hood is ok. The passenger door is ok. I do not see any notes on the huge estimate from the Porsche certified repair shop that the frame has any damage. There is a long list of parts related to that area of the car, but nothing seems to indicate labor time for frame straightening.

If the price is right, buy-back and part-out may work. It may take some time, but everything from the engine, tranny, clutch parts, lights, seats, wheels, tires, brakes etc would probably go pretty quick.

If you plan on keeping the car a LONG time, you could try fixing it, but will take a huge hit on resale of a salvage title.

Or, buy a fixer-upper and yours, replace the old parts with your parts and the finish part-out of your original car.

Sorry for the loss by the way - hopefully no physical injuries.

Take the money and leave the car. It's toast.

The wheel did not take the force of the impact the chassis did that is where the front wheel/suspension and fender attaches. The tub has suffered damage. The front cross member is bent.

One or more suspension and steering components is bent and where they attach/bolt up have been pushed out of position.

The proper position of these suspension attachment points is hard to restore.

As for keeping the car and parting it out... Yuck. Who wants some old rotting carcass of a smashed car even a Porsche taking up space in his driveway, garage or yard so he can be at the mercy of some greasy low life parts pickers coming around on weekends to try to get you to let a $1000 part go for $10 and probably destroying that much in hardware taking it off.

Let some business that deals in salvage have the car.

Take the money and leave the car. It's toast.

If you like to work on cars and tinker it may be worthwhile to buy it back. I repair a lot of vehicles with accident damage and what I usually find id a huge percentage of the parts that are listed for replacement can still be used just fine. If a part has a scuff, blemish, scrape, abrasion or even a suspicion that it is not exactly in the same condition as before the accident, it is replaced.

You may find you could repair your car and make it functionally perfect, totally safe and look great for 10%- 25% of the bid price. The people that prepare the bid are not out to save the car owner any money or take potential work away from themselves.

I assume your car still drives. If you don't want it someone will do what I suggested and have a great car for a song or fat wallet from the repair and sale.

there are a LOT of parts on a car that are not worth anything used - in the end you would have a 1/2 a car and 1/2 your money back and twice the time spent tearing apart something you loved and feeling like crud

walk away - hit refresh

Thank you all for the advice. Macster/Ivangene... I know you are right as you accurately describe the terrible, inefficient and unfulfilling process of parting out the car myself.

Guess it helps to have the support from the Rennlist enthusiasts to leave her in my past. :-). Feels so wasteful, all that new stuff and good parts... I will post later (fyi) when I find out what the insurer would charge me to 'buy back' the car after a negotiated pay out would be for the total.

It's tough to say how extensive the damage really is just by looking at those pics, but I've repaired several "totalled" cars with similar looking damage for not a lot of money and put quite a few miles on them afterward without incident.

Think about what Macster mentioned in his post above, which is pretty much a worst case scenario for what could have happened, and check everything out to figure out just what exactly got damaged. A less serious version of the damage is the control arms, tie rod and wheel took the brunt of the damage and the subframe/mounting points are still fine.

The reason for the high cost of an insurance fix is because they will fix/replace EVERY LITTLE PART that is damaged in any way. A lot of the time these damaged parts are still perfectly usuable or can be usuable with a little bit of reconditioning.

Me? If the buy back is reasonable (probably under $5k or so), I'd buy it back, repair it and make a track toy out of it.

IMO the buy back is going to be a a lot more than most would think (thats what I've found). I agree with taking the insurance payout and walking away...

Hell according to most forum threads for $18k you could probably buy 2 or 3 pristine virgin 996's :D (sorry, couldnt resist)

Its always sort of shocking how fast the cost can add up on even a seemingly minor collision. Once the car has some years on it I think its almost always best to just walk.

+1

My limited experience is it works the other way. To keep repair costs down the insurance company will bring pressure to bear to skip/skimp repairs. One of the first things denied is Celette Bench time which is sad because it is the proper use of this by the body shop that is used to bring the car's basic foundation (its chassis/tub and the very critical hard points) back to its pre-collision positon/condition.

In order to get the best repair in order to have the car put back to its pre-collision condition requires some effort on the part of the owner and the body shop/dealer to make sure corners are not cut.

When my Turbo was in the body/dealer for repairs (after a mule deer hit) the body shop had to go back to the insurance company for another $5K to cover all the things that were found after the repairs were "over" but found nonethe less during my and my body shop friend and my tech contacts inspected the car to ensure it was repaired to Porsche standards. The car went back into the shop another 30 days.

My body shop friend and my Porsche tech contacts tell me if the suspension/steering/drivetrain components are bent or worse (broken) their attachment points are almost certainly out of position. For instance in the case of my Cayman S steering knuckles were cracked. The car got hit at its driver's side front wheel too. The techs had never seen the knuckles on a street car broken before.

My body shop friend had and his estimate took that into account. It took 3 insurance adjusters (the last one an exotic car adjuster) to recognize the extent of the damage and agree the car was a complete loss.

To know for sure the extent of the damage that is not obvious requires as much tear down as necessary to expose various areas of the car and then money to rent the jigs/fixture to check all hard points are within position.

There is very little leeway. Celette provides drawings with all the allowable deviations for all hard points. These are the same as for when the car is first made/assembled on the factory floor.

Any out of position hard points have to be brought into position and the position checked/confirmed and those of nearby hard points double-checked to ensure they have not moved.

Sure someone can buy the car and rebuild it and put it back on the road. But I wouldn't touch such a car -- on general principles -- with a 10 foot pole.

Sometimes a car is ready for the salvage yard, the scrap heap. In the case of the OP's car I believe this is one such car, unless the OP had visions of a track car. IMHO if he were capable of this he wouldn't be asking about the car. He'd know if it was a good foundation for a track car and have this already sorted out in his head.

The the OP: Take the money for your wrecked car and and run away from it as fast as you can. Look forward to your next car.

You are just not quick enough with your checkbook. :)

https://rennlist.com/forums/vehicle-...9-carrera.html

https://rennlist.com/forums/for-sale...0-aero-fs.html

I love to pull parts from salvage vehicles. Can I have it? :cool:

So sorry for your great loss. Almost like loosing a loved one. What ever your decision, I hope all turns out fine for you. I know how us guys simply adore their 996 vehicles.