Retrofit costs?

[Macduff]

Hi folks

My insurance co. have come back with an offer for our car of just over £10k. The book valuation for our 2004 1.9 130 Sport saloon was £9500 so they've added on almost £700 to cover the £4k of options we had.

I think it would be nigh on impossible to find another car of the same spec so I'm wondering if you can give me an idea of what I'd be looking at to fully retrofit the following

Front & rear parking sensors
Aluminium interior finish
Chrome exterior window finish (I know this is basically impossible but an approximate cost of parts will help)
Side and rear blinds
DIS
Folding mirrors
Heated front seats
ISOFIX
Leather
Xenons including self levelling and washers
Rear Side Airbags
Symphony
Storage pack
Rear electric Windows
Split/fold rear seats

I fully expect that we could find a replacement car with some of the options but not all and I'm just trying to get a better figure from the insurance.

Thanks in advance
Dave

 

[PetrolDave]

Options are normally not worth a penny the second a new car leaves the dealer.

 

[sworks16]

what i did in the past was to search autotrader etc and find another car few cars with similar spec and use that to bump up the price. They should be paying you out enough money to buy another like for like car.

If that's the first offer they will go up more have a price in mind that you want the offer to be and strive towards that.

 

[JohnboyC]

Have to agree with PetrolDave....as soon as you leave the showroom the options are worth jack when its time to trade in.....BUT is it not just great when you wanna buy a 2nd hand motor just how much the traders "milk" the extras fitted and are charging more than top book price for it - shysters !!!!!

I have not bothered telling my insurance company about all the extras on my car.....all I do know is that its time to sell I will be removing the Isofix stuff, 18" RS6 replicas, RNS-e & Bluetooth and fitting to my next B7 A4.....

 

[Q4]

Hi Dave,

As said briefly before, unfortunatly options like your's will really only make a car more desirable to sell in the retail world but actually won't make the car any more valuable .

Your best bet is to find examples closer to your cars spec on the internet via autotrader, pistonheads etc etc and send the details and valuation / advertised price to the insurance company dealing with the claim to show them what you would have to pay to replace the car. Hopefully then you can negotiate more money for your exsisting car and spend it on getting your replacement car to the same spec.

Good luck with the insurance company and I must say having seen the pics I am glad you and your family were okay.

Regards.

 

[foolish3uk]

as q4 mentioned, the only thing it changes is makes it more desirable. you would get more money selling it privately but they are looking at a book price and nothing else!

 

[Les 51]

It does depend how much you haggle too, when I wrote off my old car they gave me £50 for the towbar and £70 for the bike rack I had fitted. I know it wasn't enough for replacing them but I'd owned it for 7 years and put 100k on the clock so I was quite pleased.

 

[Macduff]

Thanks guys. I'm well aware that options don't add much to the value when you want to sell. My point is that I had these items and now (due to someone elses fault), we have to replace the car and would like the same spec as we had before which could mean retrofitting some of the items.

 

[Slinger]

Yes I dont see why you should lose out on those extra's when the crash was somebody else's fault. You should be paid at least the total to replace like-for-like!

 

[BahnStormer77]

vwcruise.com do some of that stuff... but u know the answer already... that's a LOT of spec... several grand's worth to retrofit!

 

[Macduff]

Thanks. I'm pushing the insurance for as much as I can get.

I know how they work but since it's someone elses fault I don't see why we should loose the things we had and were used to using/enjoying.

I've looked around and find very few used A4s with half the spec we had. About the most common things from our list are leather and Symphony.

 

[Macduff]

Well I've managed to get the insurance payout up to £11k which is as high as they're willing to go.

Not too bad but we'll still be out of pocket by a few grand as we're looking at newer cars to replace ours.