www.jec.org.uk

An incident that happened to a pal of mine recently has got me thinking.

He has a '70s Mercedes on a classic policy and unfortunately ran into someone the other day. Everyone involved was ok, but his Merc has suffered fairly major bonnet and front end damage. Now I know his insurance will cover the other vehicle involved and maybe his too but what I hadn't really thought much about before is if something like that happened to my XJ-S I'm sure it would be financially written off due to it's low value.

It would be worth far more to me, especially if I could source parts and repair it myself, of in the worst case, use the best bits to re-build another or sell. The question is, does the 'wreck' automatically become the property of the insurance company to dispose of as they see fit of could I retain it. If so, I assume it would be given a written-off status which could make re-insuring difficult.

Maybe an increased agreed insurance value would be an answer. I'm sure many of us have put a lot of money into our cars over the years that we could lose easily. Any thoughts?

depending on the parties involved or whether you drove into a tree etc

the car becomes the proporty of the insurance company upon settlement , you can ' buy it back' for an agreed value , sometimes

but as an insurance write off you will need a special inspection to ensure its road worthy once any repairs are carried out, and it will always have to be declared when selling that it was written off etc

it all depends on the car , the owner and the insurers to come to an agreement

agreed value is the only real way , but that aint always cheap or practical

BB

I have no direct experience of claiming but the club's panel of insurance brokers offer agreed value at very competitive rates, I've found.

I have recently switched between them, partly because of a dispute over what agreed value they were prepared to accept, but the new firm was quite prepared to accept my higher-than-average-market-value estimate.

What problems have you encountered with the club's agreed value scheme that make them too expensive or impractical?

Pop,
I have recently had cause to make a claim on my agreed value insurance via the club scheme.
Travelling back home from the Northern Day show, we were driving South and East on the A14 not far from Stansted Airport. The offside rear tyre of our XJS blew out. This deflation caused F693 DDY to mount the central reservation and then to run along the "Armco" barrier. Damage from the impact meant all of the offside from the front bumper to the rear quarter was smashed.
The AA, "bless their cotton socks" took us all the way home to Westcliff on Sea on the back of a low loader.

It took 3 months to get the car properly repaired, including a replacement front sub-frame, by West Thurrock Coachworks (WTCW) and we got the car back on the 30-09-2013.

Originally the car was ear marked for a "written off" certificate, so I was told by WTCW, but as it was insured for £12500 the insurance company assessor agreed to it being repaired. The repair shop was an Insurance Company nominated shop and the repair work is guaranteed for 3 years.

So the answer to the original query is yes to agreed value insurance, I have 3 cars on my policy. But be careful if switching insurance companies as a lot of them now have upper age limits for writing policies.

BrianH