How written-off cars are dangerously resold for profit

From trash to cash!’, ‘Soo cheap!’, ‘£300 gamble nary keys!’… Hyperbole is live and kicking connected the fashionable videos posted by salvage repairers connected YouTube.

There are tons of them, astir fronted by excitable chaps with a acquisition for societal media supported by a grizzled ‘character’ who really does the work. They indispensable beryllium profitable.

One boasts of having conscionable bought his imagination location connected the spoils. Most contiguous repairing crashed cars arsenic a spot of a laugh.

Except that it isn’t. Ten years ago, Sadie McGrady, aged six, was killed successful a two-vehicle car crash. The inquest heard however the Vauxhall Corsa she was travelling successful had been written disconnected by insurers aft an mishap successful 2008. It had past been sold to a salvage company, repaired and returned to the road.

The conveyance examiner who gave grounds astatine the inquest said the repair had “weakened” the operation of the car, causing greater intrusion and, helium added, “increasing the likelihood of Sadie sustaining injury”.

The coroner said: “If it is beyond economical repair, successful my presumption that should beryllium the extremity of the vehicle. I tin lone anticipation that someone, determination volition listen.”

Unfortunately, 10 years connected and inactive cipher is. The 4 salvage codes, which members of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) utilized to place the presumption of write-offs but which are not bound by legislation, were updated a fewer years agone truthful they correspond a vehicle’s structural information much clearly.

However, it remains the lawsuit that Category S (structurally damaged but repairable) and Category N (non-structurally damaged and repairable) write-offs tin beryllium repaired and returned to the roadworthy without the enactment having to beryllium inspected.

More earnestly damaged Category A vehicles indispensable beryllium scrapped, but Category B cars tin beryllium breached for spares.

Of course, each of this assumes the car isn’t a alleged ‘special vehicle’, specified arsenic a classical car oregon an particularly invaluable one, successful which lawsuit nary codification request beryllium applied to it, oregon 1 that is self-insured by its owner, specified arsenic a fleet company, wherever again, nary codification request beryllium applied.

Meanwhile, questions person been raised astir the mode Category S and N codes, successful particular, whitethorn beryllium misapplied to immoderate vehicles.

Tim Kelly, a erstwhile manager of the Institute of Automotive Engineer Assessors and the laminitis of Motor Claim Guru, a institution that advises security claimants, believes a struggle of involvement involving assessors and sellers whitethorn mean immoderate write-offs are being wrongly coded.

“I’m acrophobic astir immoderate salvage sellers besides being liable for assessing the write-off categories of the vehicles they are marketing,” helium says. “They’re marking their ain homework. Coding a Cat S car arsenic a Cat N tin boost its selling price.”

A spokesperson for the ABI said: “Under the code, a written-off conveyance is assessed by a qualified conveyance harm adept who volition determine if it tin beryllium repaired oregon if it is excessively unsafe and needs to beryllium scrapped. If anyone is unhappy with however an adept has assessed a vehicle, they should speech to the vehicle’s insurer, who tin analyse immoderate issues and marque definite the codification has been followed.”

Although an inspection of a repaired write-off earlier it tin beryllium returned to the roadworthy is not a ineligible requirement, determination are companies that bash inspect specified vehicles, among them 1 called Autolign.

Until precocious it was the lone 1 recognised by HPI, which, connected receipt of a palmy report, would region a Cat S oregon N codification from a repaired car and determination the conveyance to its Condition Inspected register.

Autolign besides works with section authorities, checking the prime of repaired taxis. In total, it checks astir 30 repaired vehicles per period crossed its 3 branches.

Worryingly, a spokesperson for Autolign said the institution has seen an summation successful enquiries concerning Cat B vehicles, which cannot beryllium returned to the road. It does not inspect these oregon Cat A vehicles.

With specified small scrutiny of repaired salvage, it’s not astonishing that repairing Cat S and N write-offs is large business. Copart, a starring supplier of conveyance salvage, claims to merchantability astir a 4th of a cardinal of them each year.

Buyers interruption immoderate vehicles for spares but repair galore more, which they resell to the public. One starring online marketplace is presently advertizing astir 15,000 repaired Cat S and N cars. This fig besides includes Cat C and D write-offs – an outdated classification that besides means the cars tin beryllium repaired and returned to the road.

The question is: however good are these cars being repaired? The Institute of the Motor Industry offers a scope of highly respected conveyance assemblage repair courses and qualifications recognised by nonrecreational bodyshops.

However, Kelly suspects that connected the fringes of the commercialized galore technicians are neither qualified nor equipped to repair, successful particular, modern cars.

He says: “Older technicians particularly stay loyal to the techniques they learned years ago, but modern vehicles are built from a operation of precocious steels and different materials that necessitate antithetic techniques if a car is to beryllium harmless successful a crash.

"For maine to adjacent see buying a repaired write-off, I would privation to cognize what the repairer’s qualifications are, what methodology they travel and what instrumentality they use. I would besides privation to spot pictures of the car aft its clang and how, astatine each stage, it was repaired.”

It’s bully advice. After all, what’s billed arsenic a bargain whitethorn alternatively beryllium a deathtrap successful disguise.