Your insurance company should be able to pay you cash for the damage and you can fix it on your own without getting a salvage title. I would only pursue this route if you know for sure that you can fix it and have the patience for it.

Personally, unless I know some body shop that does a job well, I would take the money and get a new FD or used NSX with some more $$.

 

Sorry, I disagree. If the insurance company is willing to total the car and give him fair market value, I think he should take the money and find another car. I've gone through a similar wreck (heavy front end damage) in a different car, and the car never drove quite the same.

By using the term "totaled", I don't think anyone is implying it's beyond repair. Just that the value of the car may be less than the cost of the repair. Some of us do know something about bodywork/car repair, but wouldn't want to own a car that has suffered from this type of damage.

I might buy it back from the insurance company for a fair price and part it out, though...

 

The airbags popped. That alone is usually enough to total a car... when the bags go (go, deploy, detonate, explode, etc) they take out a lot of subsystems in the process. Things like dashboard frames, steering columns, wiring harnesses, etc. It's not simply putting a new bag in.

Bear in mind that as nice as it is, the insurance company sees your car as a 9 year old used car that has very expensive parts and not enough value to justify them. Mazda had this problem too, their parts pricing policies made the warranty work on the FD so costly that it was demolishing their profits. ($200 for a turn signal?? $850 for a pair of fogs????) Another one of the reasons the FD left our shores. They were selling cars at bargain prices and charging Porsche prices for the parts.

 

The reason an insurance company will total this car is because of the parts cost. I have found this out the hard way on the RX7. Many of the parts that you will need are veryexpensive $40 and $60 plus parts. You can buy the car back and remove your go fast parts and sell the car as a whole to somebody who thinks he can put it back together for $2500. These cars are like eggshells, very strong up to the point of cracking. A hit like this will affect more of the car than you may think. The Ins company knows that if they try to fix this car it will have to be in the same condition as it was before the accident, which you will expect and will be very expensive to do. In Ohio the owner of the car has first buy back rights, and the buyback is 20% if the value of the car. If the car is worth $3400 to you then I suggest you buy it and rebuild it, or turn and sell it for a profit without putting any money into it. Or you can fix it and pocket the extra cash from the $13,600 you had from the Ins. You will have a Salvage title car if you buy it back. I have the Mitchell books on these cars if you would like to know the prices of the parts. PM me if you would like some info. I just finished a CYM salvage in Ohio, so I know about the financial part of the deal.

 

I have 2 fog lights, a OEM SMIC and also a Radiator I will give ya for 200+ shipping. One of the fog lights has a broke lens but I see you have one to spair... You will have to use the brackets that are on your car since I used mine on my other pair. A front bumper is easy to come by on the forum along w/ a hood. all the stuff on your car that is messed up I see posted in the Parts F/S Wanted area every couple of months... .you could probably rebuild to whole car for less than 5g's @ THE MOST!!!! I know there are plenty of people that have parts cars out there... just have to spend 5 min. typing up some posts for the stuff that you need.
-Go look at your car and make a list of everything that you need... tell your insurance co to give you a few days to find the stuff and then give them a list w/ all of the prices for the *USED* parts and a quote for a paint job... o then tell them to pay up.

O and if your frame is twisted I say its junk because that costs a shitload of money to have redone and pulled back out. even then your car probably wont drive straight...

Go take some pics of engine bay, fender well, interior, gauge cluster, and front end w/ closeups. I'm sure the community will help you find the parts that you need.
-Ryker

 

If you REALLY want to keep the car, then you need to:

Find recent sales or advertised prices of FC Sevens in your area of the same caliber (to establish the car's value). The insurance company will have some that they use, but these are usually 'average' condition.
Using the established value (deffinitely make your case, it will save you $$$ over just accepting what they offer you), have them cut you a check for the amount MINUS the amount they would collect at auction for the wreck (again, you can check on recent auction sales). I am suprised they didn't mention this, since this actually saves them shipping costs.