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So call it £10,000 to re-chassis, lose 10k from selling it with a rusty chassis, or £20 k from your agreed value insurance if you prang it?
Seems like crashing it makes the most sense financially.
Dammit-
What I should have said is that it's unlikely you'd have to re-chassis it. The vast majority we saw needed outriggers rather than the whole thing doing. The main backbone of the chassis is easy to get to and because of the easy to maintain and keep supplied with waxoyl. The outriggers on the other had are more difficult to keep clean due to the way the body mounts to the chassis. Because of this it can become a water trap and lead to excessive corrosion.
Out of the cars I was involved with with chassis work, the vast majority just had an outrigger replacement and the rest of the existing chassis tidied up.From a financial standpoint, it may "make sense" to crash it but given there are so few cars on the market, you'd basically be doing that to walk away and buy something entirely different rather than keeping the car that you love, in the spec that you wanted. The vast majority of our customers were repeat TVR owners and in most cases, after accidents, did everything they could to get the car repaired so that they could keep them knowing that their chances of find another life for like car was fairly slim.
ricky2slicky
I'm not sure on the current cost of a Cerbera chassis but the chassis for a Griffith/Chimera is around £3,500+vat and an outrigger kit (the outriggers of the chassis being the usual part to be effected) is £600+vat.
There are currently 20 Cerbera's listed on Pistonheads with the cheapest (an early 96 car - the first year of build) up at £19.5k. 10 years ago, when I was selling them, you probably could have bought the same car for sub 10K. As time goes on, they have risen in value as numbers have declined and the people that own them and love them are actually spending the money to keep them on the road.
You've got to really want one though. There are a lot of other exciting options out there (V8 Vantage/991/F-Type R etc) that are a lot more modern for similar money now so it's definitely a hard market to sell in. I'd still have one in a heartbeat though and rue not buying one when I had the chance.