Japanese Import Accident

As car lovers, if there was one message we would like to get across to everyone is just get your vehicle appraised. We like to focus on specialty cars because to us that seems most obvious case study, but the truth is you probably need an appraisal for your daily driver too. Over half of our business comes from people whose regular commuter has been in an accident and they now find themselves getting short-changed by their insurance provider. What most don’t know is in order to dispute their value they will need you to get a third party appraisal and while this will most certainly help, its never ideal.

But we like cool cars so let’s talk about one particular incident we were able to help with.

A customer had JUST purchased his dream car - a 1999 Nissan Stagea RS4. You can be forgiven if you’re unfamiliar with the Stagea, but JDM fans will know all about these vehicles as they are based on the same platform as the Skyline - only the Stagea is a wagon. For some its a cheaper way to get into a very cool car with the potential for monster modifications, for others it simply is a cool car, but regardless even if it’s cheaper than a comparable Skyline it’s still not cheap.

So our customer had just received his car and on day one he was simply moving the car on his driveway, not even going anywhere, when someone came flying around the corner and crashed into it.

The vehicle was repairable but the risk was that insurance would write it off and cut him a check for a value far less than it was worth. He didn’t want money, he wanted his car fixed! This is a perfect scenario where having an appraisal before the incident would have made this a non-issue, but he could hardly be faulted for not having it at this point, I mean he just got the thing. But we were still able to appraise the vehicle for what we believe it would have been worth prior to the accident which allowed insurance to cover the repair and within a couple months he was back on the road with the vehicle repaired and fully insured for the full value.

What’s the point of this story? These things happen, and without an appraisal your insurance provider really has no obligation to value it for anything other than a book value if that’s all you’re paying them for. If you want to protect the value of the time and money you’ve put into your car then its not even a question - get your car appraised!