V600 Cat D

'Cost of repair is greater than 50% of the vehicle's total value.'

Presumably the total value would have been reasonably modest in 2006 compared to present values.
We now know that it may have been financially better not to involve an insurer, but pay for the repair.
I suppose the insurer paid the owner, then sold the damaged car to someone who arranged a repair.

A shame that Cat D blights the car for ever.

While the second sentence is certainly true (and I’d not heard of a marker being removed before) - the first sentence not so much.

The criteria used, and thus the definition of any insurance ‘write off’ is where the total cost to the insurer of returning the vehicle to the road exceeds the total cost that would result from a full payout minus the recoverable from disposal or sale of the vehicle in ‘as is’ damaged condition .

Thus, the more lightly damaged the car, the greater the amount recoverable from disposal - and it’s why a longish period waiting for a crucial £250 part but with the insurer funding a hire car can make a car with a lost key an insurance ‘write off’.

It is purely a business decision - which option will cost the insurer less - that is always the option an insurer will take.

Remember that the costs to return a rare and exotic car to the road post even a minor prang can also involve months of waiting for rare parts, months of hire car cost, months of storage cost… and all before the cost of what might not be a particularly expensive repair in itself.

This is why (especially older) cars are often ‘written off’ for very, very minor damage from minor car park dings shunts or vandalism, sometimes even purely superficial damage.

In terms of the ‘write off’ marker, Cat D (now renamed Cat N) is the lightest category and means no structural damage has occurred. The vehicle should very much be fully repairable by a competent repair shop. Of the two ‘insurance write off’ categories where a vehicle can subsequently be returned to the road, the other is Cat C (now renamed Cat S), where S = Structural damage, ie more serious and difficult to repair damage to the chassis has occurred.

So that V600 absolutely should not be a horror show if an accident 18yrs ago was repaired correctly and it’s all properly evidenced.

Having said that, I bought a cat D Aston and while it’s fine now, it really was still a bit of a horror show when I rather foolishly and naively bought it, as the joker who got it from the insurer had not properly and fully repaired it.

Indeed. And having uncovered and corrected the results of his uber-bodging handywork over eight long years, he deserved all the mickey taking and abuse he duly received from the forum.

Absolutely. Probably absolutely zero to be worried about for a Cat D marker from 18yrs ago on a 30yr old car. The marker is likely just an unfortunate consequence of insurance company involvement in what in many other instances might have been a simple minor accident repair. There will be many tens nay hundreds of thousands of cars running around out there with no insurance ‘marker’ but concealing vastly more serious and badly repaired damage including to the chassis.

Cat D. Buy cheap, know you will sell cheap. Simples.

Was that the "expert" who thought you could pull a crush can back to original size?
And unbend a chassis....
😄

Thanks everyone for the input so far. I'm no expert by any means on these cars. I thought the interior looked very different, so it's not original basically. I would want to go into this with my eyes open given the Cat D. I'm not sure where it was repaired.

As outlined in the earlier post, Cat C (now category S or ‘Structural’) is indeed a more serious ‘marker’ and denotes that the car was assessed by the insurer as being structurally damaged. It may well have still been fully stripped and the bent chassis repaired using jigs or a motoliner, but stating Cat D instead of C is very naughty if not an ‘ahem’ genuine mistake guv’nor..

There were various packages. This has the engine and brakes, grille trim, and sports exhaust, but not the transmission and wheels.

Thanks everyone for the info. Will give this one a skip.

I’d say around 80k?