A Cat D???? Kidding me!



2009 Ford Fiesta 1.2 Zetec 82 Damaged Salvage Cat D | eBay

i wouldn't have been surprised if int he add it said

"Minor damage that im sure will polish out!"

How the hell do they decide on the classification of these things?! I've never bought a damaged car to repair myself but I've bought them as spares cars & been involved with a few that have gone back on the road & it varies wildly. You see something like that as a Cat D & other times a Cat B with very little wrong, mabye even usuable as it is.

To be fair though with that Fiesta it may be nowhere near as bad as it looks, I know of a Punto that looked about as bad but there was no structural damage at all, just the top edge of the inner wing & the slam panel around the headlight were the only parts with any real damage that wern't bolt on. 6 months old under 4k on the clock & back on the road for about £3000 all in.

"It is a Cat D but we have no V5 at the moment" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The categorisations are not opinions, but mathematics

Cat D Repairable where the estimated repair costs are not economic, but do not exceed the value of the vehicle

Cat C Repairable where the estimated repair costs exceed the value of the vehicle

Cat B Not repairable, but the salvage retains value, break only

Cat A Not repairable where the salvage has no value

That's just it though, quite often the cars dont seem to fit in the catergary they've been given.
You'll see something that's had an mabye a scrape up the side needing a wing & two doors or a light engine bay or dash fire & fair enough the repair cost is beyond the value of the vehicle due to it being something like 8-10 years old or a classic but still perfectly repairable but it's a Cat B. And at the other end of the scale there'll be a Cat D looking like it really should be on a jig to at least make sure it's still straight & needing a load of parts & you struggle to see how it could be fixed (at least taking labour & new parts into account) for less than it'd be worth just before it was crashed.
It may be based on mathematics but it's decided by a human being, using their opinion!

It is normally decided by a computer program called Audatex, you simply add all the damage details, list the parts and it throws a total at you