2009 AT Sport 77,000 miles. Dealer installed new engine with 7000 miles.
Insurance says it's totaled, first offered $6800 but went up to $8500 when I complained about the new engine.
They will let me keep the car for $2000 with clean title (no salvage.)
Repair estimate at insurance shop was $7600 with new OEM doors. Repair estimate at independent shop with used doors is $5000.

Damage to driver's side

Car runs fine, as far as I can tell. I've been driving it for 3 weeks. I'm the only owner and I'm good about service and repairs. Is this a good buy for me at $2k? Is it really safe to drive as-is? Is it worth fixing the bodywork? Any thought are appreciated, thank!

 

Looks totaled to me.
Even if you bought doors, theres a chance that their fitment will be off if the chassis shifted at all which is very possible for side impacts. Also, looks like the airbag went off? That wont be cheap to repair and reset. Finally the damage to the body around the quarter panel area will be an expensive repair and repaint... so likely more expensive than the car is worth.

IMO, do the buy-back and keep your motor and any other parts you want and find a rolling chassis to install the motor into. Would definitely be the most cost-effective option.

 

Thanks. Airbags didn't go off. Is the car safe to drive as-is? Independent shop said it was, insurance shop was non-committal.

 

It's probably not as safe as before the impact, but there's actually safe, and then there's legally safe/compliant. It's probably not compliant but check your local laws. It will probably still protect you in a crash though. Looks like a glancing hit, so damage mostly to the sheet metal and not the crash structure?

You can buy used doors and save a lot of money. Paint shade might be off, but.. depends if you want a showcar or willing to compromise.

 

As far as I can tell it's not the crash structure, but I'm no expert. I'm taking it to the local dealership tomorrow for service and I'll see what they say. The interior door card is perfect, the window rolls down, all the electronics work. I was hoping I could just drive it now and see if I could find some cheap salvage doors locally at some point in the future.

 

It's probably safe to drive the damage doesn't look bad enough to damage frame/unibody. How do gaps look around all doors, hood, trunk? See any new ripples or dents anywhere else besides what's in the picture?

Unfortunately repairing the quarter panel is very costly and RX8 values are in the dumpster, so yes insurance companies will total it quick. If you don't care how it looks you can get used replacement doors easily and fairly cheap.

 

The only gap I see is at top between the two damaged doors. If you look in the picture right at the top of the driver's door you can see that it's not quite flush. Everywhere else looks normal.

The only peculiarity I've noticed is that the fuel gauge seems to be reading slightly different. When I filled my tank I expected to only have room for about 14.5 gallons based on the gauge level but I had room for 16 gallons. Something I'll keep an eye on.

 

Bad experience and I hope you get it sorted.
1 1/2 extra gallons of fuel?!? Are your shoes wet?

 

More photos will help.

For reference, I just had my '09 GT in almost pristine condition with similar miles (80-some odd) repaired under insurance. A temporary car port adjacent to the temporary carport it was parked under collapsed, and put a few large dents in it. Mostly just PDR type stuff, but one dent cracked the paint, and the shop ended up painting pretty much the entire car (the trunk lid and bumper skins just got polished). JUST paint was something like a $9K job. Did they HAVE to repaint the whole car? Almost certainly not. But insurance was footing the bill, and the painter was top notch, so I saw it as a nice refresh and pushed to get as much renewed as possible.

In your case, say you get used doors; they will likely need paint. That rear quarter is a bitch to get dents out of though. That's where your real problem lies. Lots of complicated layers of steel there, and where you have multiple layers, the inexpensive PDR techniques can't really get the job done most of the time. Getting that back to good is going to take someone with actual metal work skill (not cheap, and difficult to find in the bolt-on-bolt-off only repair era we live in). A lot of hours from a highly skilled person that's hard to find and therefore in high demand gets really pricey in a hurry. You might be able to find some sort of grease bucket hole in the wall somewhere that will throw some Bondo in it for cheap, but... Is that "fixed" to you?

Additionally, and going back to the paint shop allegory a paragraph back, where the damage is matters. Blending panels with Mazda's complicated paints is not for the faint of heart, and most painters will opt to paint the whole panel rather than attempt (and possibly fail) a satisfactory blend. That rear quarter's sheet metal goes all the way around the car, and they'll have the thing totally disassembled and have most of the unibody structure painted to get that clean. Once they do that, there's the risk that there's a slight mismatch between the fenders, hood, trunk lid, etc., which all then get painted to match the new body paint. Even if they get the color right, the surface finish of the old paint will look like dog vomit compared to the freshly laid paint, and it'll require work to make it look like everything but the junkyard doors didn't just, themselves, come from the junkyard.

In short, yeah. She's totaled. Sounds like Texas lets you buy back your totaled car and keep the title clean, which is great. You now have a cheap running car. Ugly, but running. Your conventional options are to take the balance of the insurance payout and get it fixed (likely throwing a few kilobucks in out of pocket), or let them have it and use the money to buy another (if you're going for an AT, you should be able to find something similar in that budget).

Something I've done is go crazy on comps and audit their appraiser's estimate. I had a BMW totaled a few years back where the appraiser gave me an absurdly valuation on a fairly rare model with especially desirable options. For starters, the appraiser checked the boxes for some sort of eastern European taxi or something; I'm talking cloth seats (don't think you could get those in the US), basic suspension, CASSETTE DECK (definitely not a US option), and so on. Additionally, they're supposed to use 3 comps from in-market (within 50 miles), and the appraiser was only able to find 2, and both were from more than a thousand miles away (maybe that should have been a clue...). I found comps at SPECIALTY dealers, which is obviously much more appropriate than whatever washes up in auction for the cash lots to hawk, and corrected the equipment. The result was a more than doubling of the valuation. Having just gone through essentially the same exercise with a very similar RX-8 though, I doubt you'll be able to get quite that traction. My RX-8 wasn't totaled, so I didn't go through that exercise with it, but you are strongly advised to do so. They'll almost always give you SOMETHING just to go away, and in any scenario, that's money in your pocket. In your case, you've got a bit of a bonus in that the actuarial programs don't account for enthusiast cars, so DON'T look for other ATs (which sell for less than manuals), find comparable manuals. They usually add a few hundred bucks on top of the manual valuation for an auto. Be careful with things like R3s or whatever, because you are on the opposite end of the option spectrum. That can actually work against you depending on how they value various bits of kit.

Final tip from someone who's recently been there, double your money (sorta)! Take the buyback and sell it AS IS. I imagine you can get more than $2K for it even if it just gets parted out. Someone is going to look at it and think, "yeah, I can fix that!" where they're thinking junkyard doors and Bondo from the aforementioned grease bucket hole in the wall. Plus, it'll still have a clean title! Then you've increased your overall payout, and you can turn around and get an upgrade. With my BMW, that's exactly what I did, and I upgraded to a nice Mercedes with the big engine, trick suspension, massaging seats, a bunch of other fun buttons, and a warranty. Bonus, I pocketed a few grand for the trouble!

 

This was a total loss, so I'm not surprised about yours being declared as such. Almost all (about 90%) of those black scuff marks were buffed out so they are not there anymore, but still...
As it was said, the quarter panel damage is usually the problem in such cases, due to the high labor costs.

 

Not even close to being a write off here in OZ i fix cars that are lot worse than that.
for insurance they just want there money back so write off the car and sell the rest to a wrecker and make there money back.
also so they are trying to get old cars off the roads so you buy a new car.

 

You can always take the insurance money, decide to buy back the salvage vehicle and get it fixed.
The problem is that depending on the location, the labor costs may be so high that it is not worth fixing unless you can do it yourself and properly. Like in this case, the car is still perfectly fine, minus the look due to the damage. The owner actually made money on the insurance payout and keeps driving the car as-is (but improved the look considerably by some buffing).

 

The rear door doesn't open, which I didn't think was a big deal since that is the seat of last resort and is hardly ever used. But after filling my tank again I'm pretty sure something is off with one of the fuel sending units. At 1/8 tank remaining I was able to add 14.9 gallons, so 2 gallons remaining, which isn't way off but it's off from what it used to be. I'd need to get under the rear seat to check it. Possibly something I can ignore for now, but if I ever needed to get at that fuel pump I'd probably need to find a way to get the door off.

 

Totally agree about the comps, my daughter’s GLK was totaled by an inattentive driver and they based the payout on some ridiculous comps. Cars in horrible shape, double the miles, etc. I scoured the auto sites and found some top notch examples with very similar miles and got almost 25% more.

You also need to consider the hassle/risk factor. If you fix it yourself, any cost if they find additional problems is on you. You’ll also be without a car for probably a couple of weeks. If you keep it as a “spare”, do you have space to store a car? Personally I would try to negotiate the best payout possible and walk, but if you’re really bonded with the car I understand that’s easier said than done.

 

Go to a salvage yard and see if they have any rx8s. That's how I fixed mine.

 

S2s are hens teeth... I don't know what it's like down in TX, but I stopped looking after more than a year of scouring yards and not finding anything within 500 miles of Denver. One came up in a Copart auction down in Springs once, but not exactly a pick and pull situation.

 

Looks exactly like mine, side swipe. So far I have $100 for rear door, and $150 for the front door already my color. rear quarter is cosmetic. Doors open and work normally. I will invest in side skirts to cover the lower bumps.
Keep on eye on FB market place for people parting out cars and hope for a matching color.

 

I found a 2009 last fall at the u-pull and pay at 66th Way-don't know what you're looking for. You can look the car up on their site and find exactly where it is in their yard

 

that's ABSOLTLY NOT totaled to a talented individual! per say someone with Bodyshop auto shop skills. that can be fixed with painting used parts in a couple of hours easy to the right person. that can realistically be fixed for around 400-500 used parts wrecking yard paint and your own free labor paint with a blend job and a set of body hammers know how.

the reason the insurance company is righting that off is because labor for a body shop is about $100-200 an hour x whatever time. Then you got parts new parts doors from dealership plus probably $2000 then 1000 in paint it adds up quicker than you think when you have an open checkbook at a body shop.

 

Try getting new doors and see if you can get that quarter panel fixed for cheap. Try to make the doors line up. If all else fails then just get a new shell