Hello!

New here. Didn't know where to turn. Hope you can help with some advice. Husband has a 2006 Mini Cooper with 95K miles on it. He had a what he thought was a minor fender bender. He ran into someone at 25mph and got what looked liked minimal damage to his side wing/bonnet. Guy in front got a scratch. Collision place initially said it would be about $1200 but upon taking it apart has upped the estimate to $3600 approx. They said that they cannot guaratee that there isn't damage to the rails and they won't know that until they tear it all apart ($$$$ later). USAA insurance telling us that they will not cover it and that it is declared a total. They have given us two options: take $3800 to cover the estimated damage and they wash their hands of it. Any additional cost we will have to meet. Or, they give us the cost of the car $4,700 and we have to buy a new car with that. I know we'll never find the same year and mileage and we'll probably have to fine an additional $1500 to find anything comparable.

Any advice?

 

Hard to say. You'd need to find the extent of the damage and go from there. You can find used body parts easily at local junk yards or on Car-Part.com--Used Auto Parts Market. You could also go to a body shop that will do used body components to keep the estimate down so that your insurance company doesn't total the car. The hardest part of all this is to determine what is the extent of the damage and go from there. Good luck.