More Advice Needed...

[bermudabob]

There I was, trawling through the Elise ads again, when I come across a metallic green S2 going for £12995..

 

'Wha..?' I say to myself. Especially as its only got 11K on the clock.

 

'Aha!' I say as I see the phrase 'Accident Damaged/Repaired'. Although it claims it is light.

 

I ring up the garage that has it and it turns out that the car is a fixed category D (I think thats the lightest sort). Its got everything else ok with it and I've been told that I'm welcome to get it checked over by a Lotus engineer.

 

I'm still a bit wary though.

 

Has anyone here had experience of buying or running previously accident damaged cars? Is it worth the bother?

 

(Graeme, I'm not classifying your S1 in this category, as it was such light damage, and I still want to look at it...)

 

Rob

[Fiona]

Tazbaz built a Cat D (vehicle damaged but repairable- insurer decided not to repair - i.e written off) back up to pristine condition.

 

Depends what kind of person you are and what risk you are willing to take. Personally, I wouldn't. You can get mint S1's for that price.

 

You may have problems insuring and then selling on. You've got to wonder why the insurance company didn't fix it. It couldn't have just been bodywork damage.

 

Fiona

[ipanter]

When i was buying i looked at a few accident damaged cars, but decided that imho it wasn't worth it.

 

Firstly Tesco who had given me my cheapest quote for insurance wouldn't insure the car. I suspect that many other insurers wouldn't either.

 

Then there is the fact that it has been damaged enough for an insurance company to write it off suggesting that it must have been pretty bad. I think they say it's around 75% the value of the car before they decide it's not worth the repair.

 

Then there is the question of who repaired the car, and are they reliable/trustworthy? There was also the nagging thought of, have they repaired everything?

 

There was also the superstitous (sp?) side of me that thought if it can be crashed once, it could happen again. (silly i know!)

 

Finally there is the question of how easy it would be to sell the car on, probably not that easy.

 

You can see that i had a lot of concerns about the safety and the quality of the repair, however, i suppose that if you can answer those questions and feel confident and positive about the answers, in other words you trust whoever repaired the car, you can probably buy a write off safely.

 

There are five classes for written off cars, A, B, C. D and X.

 

CAT ‘A’

A written-off vehicle that must be totally destroyed, including all of its parts.

CAT ‘B’

A written-off vehicle from which the spare parts may be re-sold, but from which the body-shell should be destroyed so that the vehicle cannot be returned to the road.

CAT ‘C’

A vehicle that is written-off by the insurers because the repair costs are greater than the value of the vehicle itself, but which can nonetheless still be potentially repaired to a roadworthy condition.

CAT ‘D’

A vehicle that has been written-off by the insurers, for various possible reasons, even though its physical repair costs are less than the vehicle’s actual value.

CAT ‘X’

A vehicle that is “not recorded” as being damaged on the HPI register, or which has very minimal damage only. Generally speaking, these vehicles are “stolen-recovered” cases.

[bermudabob]

Yeah, I'm leaning in the direction of no as well.

 

Its a nice idea, but having as much mechanical knowledge as a lettuce doesn't really fill me with confidence.

[Scott_Mac]

Personally i'd say no.

 

Thats cos its an S2 though*

 

No seriously, i would steer clear.

 

 

*excepting of course the S2 Type 49 , S2 135R and Sport 190

[GCCK]

The first Elise I ever looked at was a Cat D. Ultimately I think the guy had overpaid for the wreck because he was looking to cover his rebuild costs when selling on. A shame, because he had done a first class job getting it rebuilt with loads of provenance, photos etc.

 

Unfortunately the economics can unravel what would otherwise be a fine vehicle. Cat D has a stigma which takes 20-25% off the value of the car, so remember that your bargain on purchase will still be someone else's bargain on re-sale.

 

The fact is, Elises come apart pretty easily and so long as someone else is paying (i.e. insurance company) and as importantly, as long as the chassis is square, it really doesn't matter what damage has been incurred to the bits that get thrown away. They get set up with such precision that they will be as good as any other recently geo-ed car and with the benefit of some new components too!

 

Graeme

 

 

 

P.S. Mine's nearly finished - apparently the bootlid is on backorder...

[malbon]

I think I rang up about this car. If its the same one it might have been for sale private (prob on pistonheads somewhere).

 

If it is - and you are going to ever worry about re-sale then don't bother as this car (a silvery one) has been around for months and months - even on autotrader

 

It is probably an OK car but there is that stigma with re-sale.

 

If I got one I would get it properly checked and my plan would be to get one worth keeping for a while. In this case I thought the Std car would be no good for me as I would inevitable upgrade to a point then i would sell due to the miles I put on.

 

On the other hand I saw a mint S2 111s with 6k on 2003 car for 16k which i WOULD have had if it had not been sold

[GrahamW]

Mine is a Cat D write off, although I wrote it off. I asked the insurance company to write it off, says it on the HPI. The reason why I brought it back was because it was rebuit by an ex Haydon Daytune engineer who was know by a few others (who started up on his own after they went bust)

 

He had the car checked over by http://www.autoligninspections.co.uk/ who passed the car without any trouble.

 

Also, I saw what was damaged on mine as I went to see it at his workshop.

 

So, as long as you can find the history of the car, you might be OK. Plus I haven't told the insurance company - must have slipped my mind

[simon_prickett]

Therein lies a problem, if your insurer finds out, say just after you've had an accident and put someone in a wheelchair, and say they refuse to pay out and said person sues you personally... how does that make you feel?

 

I'd declare it and have a clean conscience.

 

Just my 2p's worth.

 

Simon.

[jez_s]

Mind you if you buy it cheap, then keep it for a few years and sell it on cheap i don't think you'd lose that much. It's all relative.

Still for that money as has been said above you could get a S1 ()and a good one at that!

[simon_prickett]

For that money you can have my S1, and pocket some change... or use it to get insurance and do some track days

[bermudabob]

You never know simon, it could happen...

[steve]

....or mine