We had massive hail storm with 60-80 miles per hour of winds 20 miles wide come through Friday. I didn't put the car in the garage and there is hail damage on almost every panel except the driver side. The trunk has hits on it where it has to be repainted because it cracked it. It knocked out my left taillight etc.

This car has 124K miles on it. At 120K I did the entire timeing belt service along with everything to go with it, seals the works. I have Brand new tires on all 4 tires. Last week I spent $725 on services to the car (this is with a discount). I did the AC (first time ever I did and was under 50% freon in it. Transmission fluid exchage, break fluid exchange (1st time ever). I think I did something else but don't know what it was. The only thing that needs done to the car is that the lower control arms are cracking (the rubber is) they said.

I don't know if this is going to get totalled or not. I don't want it totalled because all the work I just did to the thing. I owe like 5K still on it. I have no $$ saved to put down on another car and really don't want another car payment at this time. I had my house hit by the neighboors tree in a storm 2 years ago and it destoryed the house I was in and we had no insurance and I spent most of my life savings on another house and have a mortage and business is down 80% on ebay but has picked up 500% in the past month or so with the corona thing. I am barely making ends meet and slowly going down on the money I do have left.

So the question is if they total the car, would you go and buy back the car or not if they let me? Leasing is not an option as I put on probably 20-25K miles on the car in a year. That car I got for $36,500 or so with 8K miles on it back in 2015. I have no problem driving it around the way it looks right now. My payments are like $455 a month and have like 14 months or so left to pay it off. The car has about 80% of it from highway miles. I got screwed over when I bought the car because I was forced to pay for dentguard and paint protection $2400 extra tacked on to the price. Dent guard doesn't deal with hail.

I am looking for suggestions if anyone has any.

 

Depends on if you want to drive a visually fucked up vehicle..
You may not want to drive a vehicle with hail damage to protect your " image/ego"...
However, hail damage doesn't effect the way the vehicle drives....
If you still owe on it and don't have gap insurance, the only thing you can do is keep driving it

 

Sounds like the financial aspect of your life will guide your decision. As much as you might like a really nice car, maybe stepping back a little would be a better long term decision as cars are in general a bad place to spend your money.

 

The insurance should give you the book value if they total and the repair cost. My son had a low speed fender-bender in H.S. in his 06 TSX that cost +$7000 to repair (over the book value at the time). I talked to the adjuster and paid more out of pocket ($500 deductible+$800) to get the TSX into the repair status and with a clean title. My son drove the TSX for another 6 more years after that (really got totaled by a red light runner in 2019).

You should have the option of getting the repair money directly and you can save it until COVID-19 is over or pay off the RLX now to save $455 per month if you don't mind driving it with the dents. Save the repairs down the road.

 

If they total it, you probably can’t get any insurance for it. Try to have them not total it, give you any money you can get, and use that money to work your way out of your financial difficulties.

 

If it's not totaled, no issue. Insurance can cut you a check, you get it fixed, move on down the road.
If it is totaled, then, I believe the title at that point becomes a salvaged title. You can get the car fixed and drive it, but it will have that salvaged title instead of a clean title.

If your question is should you go back and buy it back if it does get totaled/salvaged, if it were me, I would pass and use the insurance funds (minus payoff on the RLX) to pay cash for a used Civic/Accord/Camry until I had some $$ saved for a newer preferred vehicle. Sometimes no car payment is a lot sexier than a sexier car.

Good luck and hope it all works out in your favor.

 

PDR and drive it till the doors fall off

 

thanks for all the replies. I am afraid that if the car gets totalled, then all I get back would be probably $8-9K not much you can do with that money on a car. The answer would have been alot easier if I didn't have all that work done to it. I just don't like doing all that work to it and letting someone else get it and not have to do anything else. It isn't a good idea to try to buy a car with a lower credit score. Once I pay off debt my credit will be over 750 right now it is 699/702.

 

If the do write off your car, you may still have the option of buying the "wreck" and often the cost is a small fraction of the payout. That is, if they write it off, settle with you for $9000, you may then be able to buy your car back for a couple of thousand bucks. If you are willing to drive around in it in as is condition, this is a good option. As mentioned by mk5, your car would have a salvage title which would hurt you at resale, but if you can buy it cheap and get a good settlement from your insurance company, then resale is basically irrelevant. Worth looking into anyway.
Good luck

 

What he said!!