Epic fail

It looks like a write off to me as well, because it's more than a dented bumper.
I know my Z3 is one - there's a dent and scratches on every panel and a full respray would be about £1600 cash in hand. It would be probably twice as much with all the VAT invoices.

I'm wondering if mechanical_vandal undoes what mechanical_repairs does... :-)

I just know that I've rear ended a car on a very small and light motorbike at about 5mph, I though about paying for the repair to the car myself rather than claim insurance as I was sure the damage would only be cosmetic - the only visible damage was a broken number plate, no deformation of the bumper or paint loss or anything - so I got the girl I hit to ask the repair company to phone me with a quote for the job, they came back to me with a 4 figure quote, they said the substructure of the bumper was smashed, boot lid was beyond repair, couple of light clusters needed etc.

I'm pretty certain they would have slapped a new number plate on and pocketed the rest.

My old man experienced similar, he was hit from behind, car off for repair, got a courtesy car from another company. When he returned it the hire company claimed it was badly scratched - it wasn't - and asked him for his insurance details, he wouldn't give insurance details and instead asked for a quote for the touch up/repaint work because he might choose to pay himself, the scratches magically vanished and the hire company reported to the insurance company that the car was returned satisfactorily, they clearly just fancied bunging in a claim for a respray to the insurance company and pocketing the cash when it came in.