|
I've seen a new Ford GT driving on 17th Ave. several times in the last month or so. Good on the owner for driving it and showing it off. He is brave though; the car is worth over $1M and 17th is a bit of a zoo this time of year, what with all the drunk Stampede revellers whooping it up. A carbon fiber car can not be repaired very easily and even a relatively minor incident could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix. Insurance would pay for the repair - with something like a $50k deductible - but the car could lose double the repair amount in Diminished Value. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could cost the guy $250k, plus get him famous for all the wrong reasons.
Quantifying Diminished Value is hard to do, and it is even harder to get compensated for it. Presuming the car is fixed properly, it offers no less utility. It is only when the car is sold that the owner realizes a loss. The insurance company is generally not going to write you a cheque for Diminished Value based on an appraisal or letter from your Dealer. The only way to prove that the value of your repaired car is diminished is to sell it and buy the identical car that hasn't been in an accident. Then, go after the insurance company for the difference. This isn't a quick or easy process and would only make sense if there were tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. You can also go after the person who hit you, who will in turn put pressure on the insurance company to settle - but this is messy.
If your vehicle has suffered significant damage, you really want the insurance company to write it off. Understanding the nature of the construction and materials of your vehicle can help build an argument for a write off if any part of the vehicle's structure has been compromised.
The focus should be on safety: Will the repaired vehicle behave exactly the same in an impact as a vehicle that has not been in an accident?
If you take a piece of metal and bend it, you can usually bent it back. If you bend it again, it will bend a lot easier than it did the first time. Different metals behave differently. With steel, usually the stronger and lighter it is the less it tolerates bending. Manufacturers use HSLA (High Strength Low Alloy), Boron-Steel, Carbon-Steel and other exotic types of steel in the monocoque of a vehicle. Each metal has its own properties, and often has unique fasteners and corrosion protection.
Aluminium is now commonplace in most high-end vehicles. Aluminium loses just about all of its strength if it is bent. Generally, any damage to an aluminum part means replacing the part. Many sports cars, including all recent Ferraris, Aston Martins etc., have aluminum monocoques. On some cars this is all one piece, bonded and riveted together. These parts can't be un-bonded. Rivets need to be drilled out which enlarges the hole - the same size rivet will now be too loose to refit.
Carbon Fiber is even less tolerant. The strength of Carbon Fiber comes from the directional weaves of the Carbon cloth, saturated in epoxy. If you break the fiber, there is nothing you can do to regain the strength of the part. A minor crunch on the tub of a McLaren - or the Ford GT - could mean a $250k bill.
It is important to realize you can fix just about any car to make it look the same as it did before the accident. Once the car is back together there is virtually no way to know if the work was done properly.
Insurance companies will try to get the work done as cheaply as possible - muscling the body shops to work for a low hourly rate, and directing you to their 'preferred' body shops. This just means the cheapest ones. To make insurance work profitable at $70/hour, the body shops need to pay their technicians $25/hour. Mechanical techs make about $45/hour for comparison. Body shop owners tell me they are having a tough time finding staff, and turnover is rampant... This makes for the perfect storm for poor quality.
The manufacturers have a vested interest in making sure their cars are repaired properly. That's why they have 'Approved' or 'Certified' body shops who need to make significant investments in tools and training as well as pass annual audits. Audi has something like 20 different kinds of rivets that each need a specific procedure to replace. Torque ratings on fasteners range from hundreds of lb/ft to barely more than hand tightening. Porsche even specifies that the body shops invest in a complete set of new tools that are only to be used on aluminum to prevent steel-aluminum contamination.
I would certainly recommend that you be actively engaged in the repair process. A good body shop should be more than willing to accommodate you within reason. The better you can document the repair process, and demonstrate that the structural integrity and corrosion resistance remains intact, the less diminished value you will suffer.
When you are buying a vehicle with an accident history you really want to know exactly what was done to it. If the car just had bolt on parts replaced, your concerns would be mostly limited to the paint work, which you can see. The car could even be bettered by the replacement of some items. However, just because a bunch of new parts appear on the body shop invoice, doesn't mean they are on your car. Some body shops have return rates of more than 50%... That is why the reputation of who did the work is probably the most important consideration.
| 
