I hit a car that pulled out of a blind junction in front of me yesterday. It was his fault, and now I've contacted the insurers (Admiral) to make the claim.
My baby is a write-off
Even if I bought her back, one of the door pillars is bent and the roof has given slightly, so probably a Cat C. For a Mk2 8v 5 door, it's probably not even going to be worth me repairing it.
I want to get the salvage rights, but the person I spoke to on the phone said it was handled by another department, and she couldn't put me through, as they didn't have details of my case yet. She said they would be in touch in 1-2 days.
Meanwhile, the salvage company have already contacted me to arrange to pick up my car. They wanted to collect it tomorrow, but I managed to stall them until Tuesday until I could speak to someone about salvage rights.
The car is mint (other than the damage of course) and a runout model, with a good engine, mint rainbow interior, BBS RAs, good panels, etc (even got the first aid box in the boot). I could probably make a fair bit of money from breaking.
So I have two questions:
1. Has anyone dealt with Admiral when making a claim? What are they like with salvage rights? Do they let you buy the car back?
2. What's the benefit from leaving the car mint from a claims perspective? Will it significantly increase the value of the payout? Or am I better off putting in a tatty interior, swapping the wheels and removing the trim before it's collected? If leaving it mint rather than getting all the mint parts out is only worth £100 or so, then I may as well remove what I can if I'm not getting the car back.