Will this be a write off?
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...2/IMG_0090.jpg

A tree fell on it...

There is the obvious damage to the A-Pilar, and also to the roof above the windscreen. The passenger door will not open.

It's an '03' Fiat Multipla 1.9 JTD ELX. It would cost about £9k to replace and has a trade value of ~£8k. It's low mileage and has been well looked after (apart from this incident :) )

Can damage like this be properly repaired, and how would they go about it, or would it need a new shell?

I'd prefered to see it repaired if possible as we've had it from new and were planning on keeping it a while.

Cheers

Steve.

Steve..

I work in the vehcile accident management arena and IMHO that car looks like a writeoff.. If you are approaching anythwhere near the cars value then they will write it off.. For example yesterday we had a BMW M3 2002 car in, glass value of around 30k, it had been rolled and the roof crushed in with the A pillar gone, also bonnet caved in and rear end caved in, estimated repair cost of around 15k. We wrote it off..

J

If it's an insurance job, they'll write it off.

If you pay yourself, you'll get it repaired MUCH cheaper and it WILL repair.

That's why we pay such mahoosive insurance rates:(:

Alcazar

Cheers for the replies...

It is an insurance job. They'll be assesing it tomorrow so I shall expect the worst.

Out of interest how would you repair this sort of damage? I assume you can't just replace the roof in the same way you'd replace a wing. Apart from the damage in the photo, the rest of the car is absolutly fine.

Thanks.

1) apply sledge hammer to A pillar

2) apply plastic padding to the above

3) spray paint and lacquer

good as new, guv. :)

The roof and pillars are part of the structure of the car. In a way, it holds together the whole car. Why do you think convertibles take so long to engineer and have much more strength & weight built into the main body of the car to compensate for the lack of rigidity so, depending on the extent of damage, not something you can 'fix' easily or cheaply or -more importantly - safely.

Charlie, i'd have thought you would be more concerned for the tree mate ;)
BB:)

PC, some of the "approved" Insurance bodyshops wouldn't be too far from your style of repair!

That Fiat looks repairable to me, it doesn't look like major damage, but I'm not an expert.

I had a Pug GTi-6 that was worth about 8k when I smashed it up. The whole front end was bent out and I thought it was a definite write-off. The bloody assessor decided it was repairable and I got it back complete with non-original replacement body parts! The assessor must have been blind, the AC system on that car cost almost a grand alone in parts and was totally smashed.

And my father currently has a problem with his old banger which should have been written off but it looks like the assessor and the bodyshop are in each other's pockets and authorised a repair instead.

Fiat Multipla eh?..... I bet it looked prettier with the tree on top of it! :D

sorry.... I'll get my coat!.... ;)

That'll fix, the insurance will probably write it off though as mentioned above.

You could put a roof skin on it, after straightening the frame work bits underneath, you'd have to put a section of A pillar in too. As mentioned, the pillars and the roof do provide a lot of the shell's stiffness but done properly it's acceptable to repair them. I've seen lot's of roof skins and pillars fitted with no problems.:)