Insurance Valuatons

[TR4A1965]

Hi

 

Your thoughts on this welcome.

 

Today I got my Agreed Insurance Valuation back from Adrian Flux Insurance.

 

They have valued my TR4A at £40,000.

 

My car has had a total rebuild - a picture is attached.

 

What are your thoughts on this?

 

I did see a TR4A asking £42,950 via a dealer and the condition was not close to mine.

 

So Is the dealer asking £42k plus too much or is my insurance valuation too low?

 

Best

 

Paul

 

[PYU940F]

I have no idea of valuations, they seem crazy to me. Whatever the true value I'll bet it is more than the Cessna!

 

Simon

 

TR4A

[oldtuckunder]

Blame the 25% tax free pension pots, so its due for a correction soon

[rhino_mac]

How can a tax free pension pot be a bad thing?

[TR5tar]

Hi Paul,

 

If you are not sure about the valuation, you could always ask for a second opinion from an independent valuer. Some suggestions here ... http://www.tr-register.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/55848-can-anyone-help-with-a-valuation/?hl=valuations&do=findComment&comment=467707 . I think in the past there have been people at the IWE who have offered independent valuations, so if you are going, you could have a chat with them, if they are there again. And if the valuation comes back higher than what your insurer says, show them the independent valuation.

 

Looking around at current values for 4As, not too many seem to nudge much above £30k, but as you say a lot depends on how they compare when it comes to condition. However, if a dealer was asking £42k for one, I'm sure they would be over valuing, because they'll always chance their arm. That's the nature of the game.

 

Cheers, Darren

[Geko]

Paul, I think you got yourself a very good deal. As said above - and I've been tracking quite a few of them - no one would give above 30K for a 4A also for the mere fact that one enters TR5/250 category above that mark. Those you see above 30K have been advertised for months and years and simply do not go but I should have said first that the valuation is based on the cost for rebuilding an identical car in case of total loss, which is about right in your case if i'm not mistaking.

Edited May 5, 2017 by Geko

[AndyR100]

I think of an agreed value insurance as a way to cover (within reason) the procurement of a pretty-close replacement of your vehicle.

 

So.... i would imagine, in the event of the unthinkable, you would, with a £43k cheque in your hand, be able to buy a very very good 4A for £30k and still have £13k to cover a multitude of 'improvements'/re-work

 

If I had chosen to invest sums that are significantly larger than one would reasonably expect into my pride and joy, then I don't think i'd expect all of that to be covered through insurance.

 

Your car looks as good as any i have seen Paul, I don't think id be unhappy with that valuation.

 

..... Andy

[had17462]

I am having trouble getting a 30 k valuation and put my car as a 9 out of 10

Nick

[TR4A1965]

I don't disagree with any of the above.

 

My personal view was that £40K sounded about right.

 

My restoration cost was £29,950. This did not include the many hours I spent (Over 2000)

 

The car was valued at £8k prior to restoration.

 

if you had to pay a restoration specialist I think you would easily hit £40K for a complete rebuild and then add the value of the car at the outset.

 

It is a tough call with TRs.

 

An Aston would not be far off a similar figure for restoration in many ways but the upside value so much more.

 

To me, it matters not one jot as a total loss would be devastating as I love my TR and have put too much work in to it.

 

So, in truth I see the valuation as a nominal value.

 

How do you replace the fun and enjoyment?

 

I have to say, restoring the TR was a big learning curve but I loved every minute of it.

 

As the car is such a part of our family history it also made it well worth it.

 

I think another valuation is prudent but I don't think it would be much above if anything!?!?

 

Thanks.

 

Paul.

[ianc]

Surely, what is required is a sensible valuation PLUS Reinstatement Option of, say, 50% - as is available through the TR Register's scheme.

Ian Cornish

[TR4A1965]

Surely, what is required is a sensible valuation PLUS Reinstatement Option of, say, 50% - as is available through the TR Register's scheme.

Ian Cornish

 

Ian, what is a 'Reinstatement t Option'? I have not heard of those? How does it work? Best. Paul

[mike3md]

Paul,

 

See the ad for TRR Insurance Services on page 16 of TRaction 297 (April).

 

Mike

[ianc]

Thanks, Mike, for providing Paul with the answer!

I wouldn't dream of insuring any TR without the addition of Reinstatement Option. One or two unfortunates, who had serious prangs in their TRs and wanted to re-build the car, found that they had to shell out a pile of money to cover the difference between Agreed Value and the actual cost of restoration.

With a decent but 'ordinary' TR (i.e. no special provenance to elevate the Agreed Value), I would be thinking of 50% or even 75% Reinstatement Option, as it does not add greatly to the overall cost and it ensures peace of mind.

Ian Cornish

[Malcolm Tatton]

Not directly relevant to the first post in this thread, but yesterday I met someone whose Bristol suffered body damage in an accident and whose insurer immediately paid out full agreed value, and he got the salvage FOC.

 

He was very positive about the broker and the insurer but his quote for repair of the salvage was much more than the agreed value so he has to decide whether to sell the salvage or put his hand in his pocket and spend more than the amount received on repairing the car.

 

Although his policy was better than the TRR scheme in that he gets the salvage FOC, it was worse in that there was no uplift option which might have avoided the decision that he now faces

[tim hunt]

I agree with Andy, Paul. I have always viewed an insurance valuation as what one would expect a willing buyer to pay a willing seller for a car to the same standard as the one in question. It is never meant to represent acquisition cost plus cost of restoration. your painstakingly thorough and so well documented restoration is beyond reproach and I think the agreed £40K is realistic. The dealer you mention is of course trying it on with his car. I note the latest TSSC valuations guide gives £38.5K for a Concours 4A. The same guide suggests £65 for aTR5 in the same condition. It's just getting silly now with speculators piling in, I am prejudiced of course but no one will convince me that a 5 is a 68.8% better car than a 4A.

 

Tim

[Alec Pringle]

We restore TRs for our own masochistic pleasure, not as any sort of financial investment, and certainly not with any expectation that the end result might be able to be resold at a price to cover restoration cost, let alone original acquisition cost as well.

 

If you look at what other used cars are available, not to mention new cars, in the price bracket of £40-50K . . . . . . then why on earth should anyone wish to pay that sort of money for a mass production and relatively common TR ?

 

OK, a different matter if the individual car in question has the kind of past track record that provides a passport to prestige social motoring events, but that is a one in several hundred car and the exception to the rule.

 

As for an agreed value of £40K or more, difficult to decide who is in greater need of having their bumps felt, owner or insurer.

 

Look at the back pages of any 'classic car magazine' . . . . . stuffed full of desirable offerings at outlandish prices, many of which have been on offer for months or even years. It's not often that I see a decent classic car on the road these days, so rarely in fact that it's hard to credit that there are so many left to advertise . . . . .

 

And if the wretched cars are no longer serving a useful function as a means of enjoyable transport, then surely their future value can only diminish with the passing years . . . . . a ton or two of garage ornament has only so much appeal, or potential value.

 

Cheers,

 

Alec

[oldtuckunder]

We restore TRs for our own masochistic pleasure,

 

then why on earth should anyone wish to pay that sort of money for a mass production and relatively common TR ?

 

Look at the back pages of any 'classic car magazine' . . . . . stuffed full of desirable offerings at outlandish prices, many of which have been on offer for months or even years. It's not often that I see a decent classic car on the road these days, so rarely in fact that it's hard to credit that there are so many left to advertise . . . . .

 

And if the wretched cars are no longer serving a useful function as a means of enjoyable transport, then surely their future value can only diminish with the passing years .

 

Just pulling a few threads together....

 

The problem is that these days a lot of people don't restore, they just buy restored. I passed comment the other day about tax free pension pots and they do have a lot to blame for this trend, someone hits 60(ish) they have a tax free lump sum in the bank of 50-250K (even the average GP today is likely to have a pot big enough to take 400K tax free if they chose), the mortgage is paid, and they have money for toys. I have personally sold two restored cars in the past 3 years at what I considered to be top whack at the time (although the XJS convertible would be worth about 30% more today) both of these sales were to people who had never had a classic before but had always wanted the specific car when younger.

 

There was another thread a week or so back about a lot of classic drivers no longer giving a cheery wave to others as we all did in the past, IMHO this is partly down to the fact that in the past if you saw another classic you knew that the other driver like you had spent blood sweat and tears just keeping it on the road, these days if you don't have that attachment to the vehicle you are driving why should you attribute or even think of it when seeing another driver.

 

I was talking to a local specialist restorer who mainly does Aston's (so way out of my league but a nice guy) and he said he could draw me a graph to decide what classics to buy that would be increasing in value. Basically you take the prime buying age around 60, then you look back 40 years to what were desirable cars when those people were in their late teens/early twenties and on the whole those are the cars they want to buy as classics. So you get a rolling wave about a decade wide with cars falling off the back that have reached their peak and newer cars starting to be picked up on the front of the wave. You can see it even in the TR models 15 years ago the most expensive TR's were 2,3,4's 6's were as cheap as chips and 7's were in the discount buy one get one free range. Look what has happen'd to 6 prices over the last 5(ish) years doubled-trebled, look at what has been happening to good TR7/TR7V8 prices over the last couple of years, climbing fast (all be it from a low point). As he said cars falling off the back of the wave don't plummet in price, but unless really special they tend to tread water, become difficult/slower to sell as the generation that identifies with them dwindles.

 

Alan, just chewing the cud!

[TR4A1965]

Rarity is a big influence on price and a TR4A is hardly rare. I have seen that they seem to be the more desirable TR at the moment other than the TR5 but the purchase costs are very different.

 

I looked at reinstatement options but as my TR has a valuation on the high side it works out to be the same.

 

If I crashed my TR4A I would want to do everything I could to ensure that very same TR was restored/fixed and back on the road. It is the car that matters to me not the value. Full restorations do cost due to the amount of time required and people that run restoration garages should be paid the going rate for their hard work.

 

Doing the work yourself saves a lot of money but after having restored my 4A, I don't know if I want to spend another 2000 hours of my life doing it again when I have insurance that would pay for it? At £35 an hour that would be £70,000 so £40,000 starts to look like a bargain.

 

Having said that, my son keeps looking at the TR so if he wants one no doubt we'll end up restoring another one!?!?!?!? It'll be easier second time around, right:-)?

[tim hunt]

Spot on Alec, I saw a Jaguar F Type 3.0S convertible in a local specialist dealer the other day with a sticker price of £39,995. Tempting if it had not been too wide for my garage. When one would have to pay the same for a really decent TR5 it's a no brainer for me, mush as I love TRs.

 

Tim

[ianc]

If a car insured under the TR Register Insurance scheme had an Agreed Value of £40,000 and Reinstatement Option of 75%, there would be up to £70,000 available in worst case scenario.

Surely it's worth investigating the cost of the Reinstatement Option?

Ian Cornish

[TR4A1965]

That looks tempting Ian.

 

I will loo into it.

 

Best

 

Paul.

[Alec Pringle]

Any and every insurer is in business to make a profit for its shareholders.

 

Free lunches are few and far between. The idea that any Lloyds syndicate would start dishing out additional funds unnecessarily is not worthy of consideration . . . . . and in any case would be in breach of their obligation to shareholders.

 

If a TR value £40K is damaged in an accident, it's difficult to see how a potential Category C 'write-off' could cost more than £40K to rebuild . . . . . .

 

If the bill is larger than £40K it would surely be a Cat B 'write-off' car, not Cat C, and by the cosy agreements between insurance and salvage industries fit only for dismantling for spares. Rebuilding isn't an option, end of. Maximum payment therefore £40K agreed value.

 

The insurer is surely going to declare the car a Cat B total loss and pay out £40K rather than a Cat C rebuild for £70K . . . . .

 

That the customer is paying an additional premium for a possible 'benefit' which is unlikely ever to become available is hardly likely to trouble the conscience of an insurer.

 

Caveat emptor, as they say.

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[derek H]

Tr4a 1965

See personal post

Derek

[TR5tar]

Hi Derek,

 

I'm someone who pays the extra for the TRR Insurance uplift as added protection. With that being so, I'd be interested in your response (or the insurers) to Alec's post #22. Good if you can post here so that all can see, or if you'd rather not then PM me.

 

Darren