Cat D isnt something to worry about, my Jag was a cat D when I bought it from a salvage yard & was very light indeed, a `new` (used) bumper, grille, Bumper & intercooler was all it needed, that lot + paint came to about £600, the damage hadnt even touched the slam panel.
However, new parts from Jaguar (bonnet £700, bumper £1200, grille £400, intercooler £400) plus paint & Jaguars labour rates wrote it off easily...
At the end of it I laid out less than 1/2 what it was worth.
One of my Daimlers had very similar damage when I got it, but, I had
all the parts already on a spares car AND in the right colour, so 1/2 an hour after getting it home, it was back on the road again for a grand total of £273.... 4 years on she`s still perfect...
Its ecologically sound too...
Cars can even be catagorised as a D with no body damage whatsoever, especially if parts needed (sometimes trim) are backordered as the cost of a courtesy car for say, a 6 month ETA, would outweigh the cost of repair (I saw this happen several times when I was at Peugeot involving trim & convertible roofs).
The issue I
do have is how they are catagorised.
I`ve seen cars with even less damage than my Jag catagorised as Cat C, yet I`ve seen cars with fairy substantial structural damage catagorised as a D, this is primerily down to the estimators report, who are sometimes asked by the owner to raise the estimate to ensure the car DOES get written off (as they fancy something new or it had mechanical issues that they were going to be lumbered with).
There is no legal requirement to declare whether a cars an ex write off in the UK, the ball is in the buyers court to check.
Even if you do get a HPI, its no guarantee of anything, theres a fair number of damaged cars that dont go through insurance & so never go on the register.
Heres an example... I doubt this is on the HPI as it was never registered...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230364011806&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
Another thing I found is that vehicles that arent initially registered with the current industry standard VIN number on their log books are confused by the HPI system.
I found this out when I tried to sell my old 1984 Ferrari. It had a full VIN number on the car, BUT, when Marinelo Concessionaires registered it with the DVLA when new, they registered
both the VIN
& engine number as only the last 5 digits of the VIN number... It turns out they used to do that with all the Ferrari`s & Mazzers it sold till the late 80`s...
When you HPI`d mine, it came up as a digger with outstanding finance AND a written off Vauxhall Cavalier... Not good & not always easily explianed to buyers who didnt understand the faults in the system...
Theres no problem with buying a cat C or D car thats been repaired properly, however, if you dont know what to check on a car, then take someone who does... that applies whether its on the HPI or not...
