After calling a few shops and a couple of mechanic friends, and hearing a few stories, I agree with you and John. I went to see it at the body shop today, for the 2nd time since the incident, even though I knew nothing had been done to it yet. I really want it back in my garage. That really sums up my feelings at this point.

 

If you decide to fix it use the Celette, its the only true bench, essentially is a jig of the car. It is dificult to set the car up and the younger shop guys won't use them They like easy on off and "good enough" is the standard for them from doing too much production work.

 

Well...

The Celette bench is just a frame rack. There is nothing special about it. What sets it apart from the other "generic" machines is the FIXTURES. There are fixture sets made for each car that are pertinent to that car (or closely related ones) only, and can be helpful in getting a car straight if it is badly tweaked. Yours is not, particularly. The problem is that these fixture sets are very expensive... and bulky.

You can imagine that any shop using them will have to spend a lot of money on fixtures for a lot of different cars. That's why not many people use them. They work very well, but are largely redundant for anything but a really twisted chassis.

 

Well they slightly undervalued my car but really low-balled the salvage value at $5K. So I took the salvage, paid off the $12K left on the loan, and pocketed an extra $3K in cash. Now I'll temporarily be in the parts business