Good news: Everyone is OK. Bad news: Prius is toast. Some guy rear ended me today, as I was stopped at an intersection waiting for the car in front of me to turn. Much of back end crushed. Then my car got pushed into the car in front of me, so much of the front end is crushed too. This is a 2004 with JBL and CD-changer etc. upgrade package in Canada. This is my mini-review here from 2004: Eug's Prius 2004 mini-review. | PriusChat The car has 158500 km on it, so not quite the 100000 mile club unfortunately. I was hoping to post here when that happened. The car has been well maintained and I was actually planning on keeping it at least another year, but possibly until 2018 or so. (I was waiting for the new Gen IV.) What do you think this car is worth, in Canadian dollars? I was doing some estimates online and they were coming up in the >$6000 CAD range for the base model, but I see Priuses (Prii?) from that generation with higher mileage being listed for sale for significantly more, more in the $8000-9000 range. Is that latter number more representative, or are these sellers (including used car dealers) just being too optimistic? At either price range though, I would assume this car is totalled. It is totally undriveable. In fact, it looked like it was bleeding all over the road, which I assumed was transmission fluid. I haven't talked to my insurance adjuster yet, but I was curious. Also, I figure it'd be good to be armed with as much information as possible beforehand.
BTW, I called my insurance company and they recommended several body shops that are affiliated with them. However, all of them seem to be rather low end looking. Where would you recommend I take my car for estimates? How do insurance companies generally deal with discrepant estimates? I know the local Toyota collision centre would be high priced, but at least they deal with Toyotas all day long. Does it make sense to take it to a Toyota dealer/collision centre? My guess though is that the local Toyota dealer won't want such a write-off on site taking up space, whereas other 3rd party places won't care.
If it is indeed totaled, your best bet might be to donate it and get the tax write-off, if they do that sort of thing in Canada. You probably won't get Blue Book if it's totaled.
What do you mean by that? To be clear, I'm not selling it, but wondering what the insurance will give me for it. I was hoping to get at least blue book value. The reason I asked about the value was because the selling prices online seemed higher than blue book (or the Canadian equivalent of blue book). I just spoke to the insurance adjuster and she said judging by my description it is indeed likely a total write-off, considering my car is 11 years old. She also said that I can get an idea of the value by the selling prices of similar cars on AutoTrader.ca so I checked there and it also seems that the prices there are higher than the online blue book assessments. I guess we'll see what the assessor says, but fingers crossed for more than blue book value. Maybe I'm just being too optimistic though, as bisco suggests.
If it gets totalled and it is grey, I'd like to buy a few of my worn interior parts such as floor mats!
Some insurance companies (mine, USAA included) will give you some credit on a total loss for recent additions like tires, battery, etc. if you can document that they were purchased in the last year. Also, make sure you itemize all the options when discussing with the insurance company if they don't have them documented by your VIN.
I informed of them of the fact that I got the tech upgrade package, not the base model. Also, they volunteered that I should get new car seats for the kids as well, and that will be covered. BTW, here are the pics (including the car that hit me, and the car I got pushed into in front):
A very similar collision happened to my son whose Nissan Frontier was sandwiched on Feb 2. We're picking up a used 2007 Scion tC for him Saturday.
Got the valuation from the insurance adjuster. For the base model it would have been a little under CAD$7000 plus tax, but with my package B, it's a little under $8000 + tax, which works out to almost $9000. Not bad for an 11 year-old car. This is based on JD Power's price comparisons.
