Flood cars

I heard of people trying to buy classic and antique cars that were in the hurricane Katrina from the insurers, and they all said no they all will be crushed, kinda sad to hear.

Disgusting! The owners should be able to buy back and part out the cars. I <span style="font-style: italic">believe</span> that's possible under the system as it's being implemented. I certainly hope so.

I called Bob Wallace the President of J.C. Taylor to get an expert answer to this thread. Bob explained that early on there were some <span style="font-weight: bold">rumors</span> that cars would need to be scrapped due to pollution. Fortunately, they were only rumors and speaking for his company they have and always have allowed their customers (in almost all cases) to buy back their cars at salvage rates. I am sure most of the specialty insurers are following the same course. However, maybe some of the large insurance carriers that "dabble" in allowing a collector car to be put on the family policy have other thoughts. I do not know.

Most large insurors who "dabble" in the antique car market are smart enough

to dispose of salvage to recover some of their losses. They may use salvage companies to pick up the cars if they don't sell them back to the insureds.

They will then sell them at auction to any licensed rebuilder or parts buyer

at regular salvage auctions. In Florida they get a Totalled Title. Crushing them is a waste of money and most are to smart to do that.

30 years in the Insurance business leads me to believe very few will be "crushed".

Paul Dobbin (Florida)

"Another way to prevent fraud is to put vehicles out of commission permanently, by crushing or shredding them. Most notably, Progressive decided that, because of concerns about contamination, vehicles from parts of New Orleans and all of St. Bernard Parish would be destroyed. The company estimates that about 4,000 vehicles will be destroyed, about 20 percent of 19,000 auto claims"

QUOTE FROM NEWSPAPER

Roger --- Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers. In fact it may be wise not to believe ANYTHING you read in the newspapers. Too often they report the news as they want it to be rather than what it is. And it is a fact that the news articles are often written by people who know absolutely nothing concerning the subject about which they are writing.

Who wants to bet there will be some for sale here at Daytona next week?

....and they're doing the same thing with the troops that are deployed overseas.

Some insurers, like Allstate and Progressive are reportedly crushing their totals. State Farm, however, is still wavering. In fact, it is fighting a bill in Louisiana that would force destruction:

November 21, 2005

Senate Passage of Louisiana Flooded Vehicles Bill Hurts Consumers

BATON ROUGE, La. ? In a move that could prove detrimental to Louisiana consumers and insurers, the Louisiana Legislature narrowly passed a bill last night that would require all vehicles determined to be "total" losses as a result of recent flooding to be crushed.

The sad thing is, as with almost all legislation passed by state and county legislators, they never remember collector cars, because they aren't normally into the hobby or even historical preservation. When there are collector activists available to bring to their attention the "difference" between collector cars and regular cars, they do stop and listen. The historical artifact approach usually gets their attention, as well as does the argument about the permanent and irreplaceable loss aspect of very old cars. Since old cars are restored and thus disassembled completely this should mitigate the health aspect too, as there must be ways to decontaminate the vehicle before and during disassembly should protection for the restorer be involved. The Louisiana law could yet be amended. Despite all of the trauma from the hurricanes, hopefully there are some collectors who can band together to take a plea to the state legislature in an effort to save these damaged rare cars. Consider, there could be some one-of-a-kind vehicles that were in collector's hands who lived in the affected areas. I do know this, under much different circumstances where collector cars were severally threatened by unfair taxes in Virginia, the group I lead at the time was able to use the historical and educational aspects of car collecting and restoration, among other things, to convince the state legislature and Gov. George Allen that collector cars should be exempted. Prior to that time they had never even thought of collectors cars and just lumped all cars together in one bag.

New Law, pasted today in the State of La. (Crushing Cars)

"Water-damaged vehicle" means any vehicle, other than an antique

vehicle or a vehicle in excess of twenty thousand pounds gross vehicle weight (GVW), whose power train, computer, or electrical system has been damaged by

flooding as the result of a gubernatorially declared disaster or emergency and that is a "total loss" as defined in Paragraph (11) of this Section. 18

Ill Winds (& Water) of Change: The collector car world and insurers rocked by hurricane season

--Autoweek, 12/9/05