Unfortunately, my lovely Mazda Eunos Roadster VR-Limited 1996 was involved in a nasty accident on Sunday, a speeding motorcyclist hit my drivers side wing at a junction and has most likely written the poor thing off (from an insurance/economical perspective, not from being irrepairable).
Given the situation, I’m looking to get clear in my head the value of the car, it was bought from Dandycars a few years back for £4k and I bought directly from the purchaser last year, it was in impeccable condition. I’ve been looking around online to find the same model but I can’t seem to find any on sale (as there were only 700 of this model made), only comporable models like the below:
Does anyone have any advice, as we all know you can buy a battered Mazda for a few hundred pounds but for the really good and rare examples, which I had spent some time tracking down, you pay the top end of the spectrum for.
I just want to ensure the valuation is fair and be armed with enough evidence to support it.
Do you have an agreed insurance valuation? You say “was” in impeccable condition. What condition was in it after these few years? Valuations are all over the shop but if the car was pretty much as you bought it and not perforating I’d wager anything between £1,800 to £2,300 will be bandied around. Truly exceptional surgically clean garage queens can fetch 3.5 + on a good day if the seller is closely related to the Devil and the buyer has very deeply rose tinted specs…or daft. A genuinely rare (1 of 80) Tokyo black recently failed to meet reserve at what Dandy sold your car for years back so there is one benchmark. Our “Ltd Editions” hold no water when it comes to insurance pay outs. It’s hard to find a good Mk1 that actually is not a Ltd… and your insurance company won’t give a monkeys. It’s harsh these days. I’ve got one similar to yours and it’s on my mind a lot, as I thread through Tesco car parks, that one half decent paint swap and it’s off to be cubed.
Wait for your insurance company to send their assessor and see what they value the car at, it might play into your hands with a low valuation as a few, not all, will allow you to buy it back at a reduced amount. If the damage is only to the wing, it will be an easy and cheap repair.
Good luck,
Brian.
Thanks both. Interesting as I’ve also been advised to make my case ASAP as to the value of the car before they send me their proposed value.
I can elect to get the car back for salvage/scrap rate which as I understand is fixed rather than a percentage of the perceived value of the car? It will be my responsibility to collect the car presumably.
If the rate is fixed then there is an argument for getting as the assesed value as high as possible minus the salvage fee. Car is almost as it was when I bought it, 5,000 more miles on it and a slight scuff on the wheel arch thanks for a countryside pothole. Other than that, operationally still one of the best cars I’ve driven.
Ian C - yes those links are the closest I can see currently on sale to the VR i.e. limited run, good condition, same dealership.
I’m also looking at Merlots on ebay etc. and they don’t come close to the condition of mine before the crash.
Its probably a good idea to have the car under your control while negotiations proceed. Years ago, my brother was with Adrian Flux. He had imported a very nice Mitsubishi FTO via Autolink; totally standard, just a nice spec. The wife went into the back of someone, damaging the bumper and headlights. The headlights are £400 a piece on those, new. The car was recovered to a depot, and the first derisory offer came through; £1000 or so for a car that was probably worth, pre-accident, £5-6k. This was rejected, efforts made to show selling prices of other similar FTOs were ignored. Finally, after about a month, my brother decided he could fix the car himself, and asked for his car back. Then he found the insurance company had already gone ahead and sold on the car via auction. Adrian Flux were hopeless during this process. Finally, a threat to take them to the insurance ombudsman resulted in an offer that was reasonably close to my brother’s expectation of a fair price. Plus he got an additional payment for the inconvenience, but this was not something he wanted to deal with while deployed.
Be warned, if the car is being stored someplace, the insurers can levy a daily storage fee, which is kind of like black mail. It might be worth £100 or so to get the car transported back to your property, and then continue negotiations. The FTO incient, it turns out, is not isolated. I had a little prang a while back (argument with a grass bank), and managed to drive the car to the garage who had repainted the car 12-18 months earlier. Adrian Flux was my insurer at that time. The car sat there for 3 weeks, with no assessor turning up. In the end, I just bypassed Flux, who were hopeless, and went straight to the insurance company. It had turned out that Adrian Flux had never bothered to inform them. I think I was lucky, as within 5 minutes of my call, they went ahead and authorised works on the car, without seeing it, ending up with a bill of about £2k on a car worth maybe £2500. I am no longer with Adrian Flux.
I agree with above - always, without exception, get the damaged car taken back to your home and keep it until the payout is agreed - then buy it back from the Insurance Company.
The Insurance Company will only give market value and that’s going to be peanuts, only those trying to buy an immaculate Mk1 knows that there are 99.9% of ‘aslo rans’ … just 0.1% are truly worth much more than book price. I know, I’ve just sold a show condition MK1 for a very respectable price - the market value would have been a fraction of its true worth.
That’s why we have agreed value policies - did you have one?
Sadly not on the “agreed valuation”, being a man in his 20s with a license for only 3 years meant I had to go for the lowest bidder to economically run the vehicle.
I’m sure this crash will help matters when it comes to my premium…
Hi there. I run Goodwood Sportscars and I’ve sold quite a few VR-Ltds in my time including at least four this year. In fact I have one being collected this very weekend and that sold for £2500. Any good condition VR-Ltd should be £2000+ as a very minimum and often substantially more as they are becoming quite collectable.
Lets put it this way: if I could fill my garage with VR-Ltds, I’d have the lot sold for good money within next to no time - and I’d be a very happy chappy too.
Any chance you’d be happy to make that point to the guy responsible for valuing my car? I just spoke to him and he’s having a hard time finding any on sale at the moment. In all seriousness, I think he’d appreciate your input as he has to make the case to his bosses?