My car got written off. 11 years old but in good condition, got hit on the rear left corner, sheet metal work was damaged. The tier 1 body shop that the insur

My car got written off. 11 years old but in good condition, got hit on the rear left corner, sheet metal work was damaged. The tier 1 body shop that the insurance company sent me to quoted about 3/4 of the car's (undamaged) value in repair costs, including replacing most of the left side, the back window among other things, and even $600 worth of paint. Shopping for a replacement vehicle in the damaged one, various tier 2-3 dealer types said, oh, we could fix that up real nice for $3K, and one of them would have been happy to have the car at the insurance company's quoted value in damaged condition. So you can bet that that thing has by now been auctioned off, fixed up like that and sold, possibly with a "rebuilt" title, at a modest profit, and continues to be used. It was too good to scrap and the damage, while a PITA to fix, was not even remotely structural. So it's not that insurance companies consign all these written-off cars to the scrap heap. It's just that they don't want to deal with the repairs, and possible post-repair complaints. So just like bad debts, it's sent down the pipe to the people best matched to the job. A broken cast frame would short-circuit this process, causing the car to be scrapped for real and thus raising costs for everyone.