Hi again...
Well I got the bad news (on Wednesday) that the car is a total loss. The insurance adjuster stopped estimating at $15K and the body shop had already arrived at $13K without taking into account the cost to repair the frame. I don't have any place to store it so I guess I need to negotiate with my insurer over the best valuation of the car. I have managed to find all my receipts, in one form or another, for all of the hardware I upgraded, including the brakes. I'm not having much luck finding another Firebird that sounds like a sure thing, with what seems like such a short time-frame to work with (I am one of the few, apparently, that didn't see fit to add rental reimbursement on my ins. policy).
At his point I don't think there's much to gain since I don't have the expertise to second-guess the body shop on whether it's worth fighting for (to repair the car), especially since the ins. co would only sell it back to me with a salvage title... and I have nowhere to store it. I've been checking LS1.com and fbody.org, and looking at other car options, but I'll be damned if I have go non-GM.
On the one hand, I think it's clear that the ins. co. will take the easy way out (whatever that happens to be) to avoid paying over $10K in repairs and continuing insuring same car. On the other hand, I think the body shop, whom I trust fairly well, has a point about the impracticability of spending thousands more than I can spare to get it to a state that won't be like it used to be. Sounds like I'm out of options here, eh?
Btw, the ins. co. wants the car towed to a salvage yard (because they don't want to keep paying $50 a day for storage) and they haven't given me a settlement figure, which they implied I could negotiate on!
~w~ (Robert)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Weland" Newsgroups: alt.autos.camaro.firebird Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005 11:09 AM Subject: Sad news for me