[RockCrusher]

Well, that's unfortunate.

Hope your injuries are not severe and you experience a full and speedy recovery.

Unfortunately I have been down a similar path -- with my 4 week old 2008 Porsche Cayman S, which was declared a total loss and more recently my 2020 Dodge Challenger Scat Pack which experienced over $8000 worth of damage. (Pics below.)

All I can offer is seek out a highly regarded body repair shop. The goal is to seek a shop that if the car is not declared a total loss to do a proper repair of the car, to bring the car back to (as best as humanly possible) its pre collision condition.

However, the shop will likely not inspect the car until after the at fault driver's insurance company has inspected the car.

But when it does inspect the car the shop will perform a partial tear down and without a doubt find additional damage.

Even then the cost of repairs can go up as the work progresses and more damage is found. My experience is the cost to repair can go up another 10% or more by the time the car is completely and finally repaired. (This was not with the aforementioned Cayman S but with several other cars.)

Your hope is the shop finds enough damage to raise the cost of repairs -- or serious enough to be unfixable -- that the insurance company will declare the car a total loss.

Lawyer up? Well, with injuries maybe. I lawyered up once when experienced a fractured femur (3 fractures which required surgery, PT, and 14 weeks to recover sufficiently to return to work). The attorney walked away with about 40% of the settlement. But you can certainly talk to an attorney.

Assuming the car is *not* declared a total loss repairs will begin. Because you have picked the best shop the car will be on its way to being restored to its pre collision condition.

New/factory (ordered from an authorized BMW dealer/parts department) are a must! The insurance company will push to have the shop use OEM (which are not factory that is do not have a factory part #) or used/salvage parts. If factory parts are not used they are not covered by the car's factory warranty. At least this is what I encountered before with other brands of cars. But read the fine print in the car's warranty booklet to see what BMW has to say on this subject.

When the car is declared repaired arrange to take the car to a BMW dealer and have it inspected. When I got my Dodge Challenger back a couple of senior techs found issues and I had to take the car back to the body shop to get these addressed.

Diminished value. Once the car is repaired and has been post repair sorted you can look into this.

I used Auto Appraisal Group.

Auto Appraisal Group
PO Box 7034
Charlottesville, VA 22906
800-848-2886
www.autoappraisal.com

But I want to stress if the car is not declared a total loss but is rather deemed repairable you want to work towards getting the car repaired back to its pre collision condition.

[Tuxon_Speed]

Originally Posted by clydefrog

Sorry to see and did enjoy your YT content on the car. Since it's been a while any update from the insurance? Doesn't seem like enough to total to me from the pictures

Yep they are not totaling the car out. They are starting repairs soon. But parts are on back order with no eta

[DBV]

Oh damn, just saw this! Glad you're ok, but what a shame about the car! ...and the back ordered parts... it's what honestly scares me the most about a repair to the car.

[Basketcase]

Any update on this? Saw your new car on IG