What do you guys do for insurance? Who do you use? How do you insure when the value is greater than the bluebook value or edmunds? How do you get around the risk of tying up more money in your car than you can get out?

 

lol, you don't, I've got over 20k into my 93 and ill never get close to that out of it. its all about the love you have for your car. talk to your ins broker and see if they can help you out on replacement cost.

 

I have a lot of liability insurance on my vehicles but your situation may not require that.

 

You get an independent appraisal on your car, listing and showing (with pictures) all the upgrades, and have it insured for full replacement value based on the appraisal. I used car-appraisals.com, but now I see it's called valuemystuff.com. At the time it cost me $50, which was money well spent.

 

Just keep in mind you spend $1800 on an exhaust it does not increase the value of the car $1800. It is pretty rare for people to have less money in their cars then they are worth. Lets say you buy a new car for $38K you drive it off the lot. It is now worth 33-34K because anyone that buys it is the second owner.

Many insurance companies now offer replacement value option but it is not free. Nothing is free so it depends on the person. Some people hate to pay insurance (like me) I only fully insure my cars that I owe money on. I tend to remove the full coverage as soon as the car is paid off. I do keep a 20K policy on my 67. At the time they quoted it they offered me a 30k but I liked the price of the 20k one. It was $115 more per year. I rarely drive it and only do so on nice sunny days.

My Father worked for a large insurance company he told me less than 20% of the insurance paid in goes towards car repairs. The rest pays for the company and profit. Insurance companies know most people are scared and they know over your life time you are going to pay them 5 times more then they pay you. If for a minute they do not think you are going to be a 20%er they will drop you.

 

Totally agree with all of the above. This will be my daily driver as such I cannot get an agreed upon value insurance policy since it is not a hobby vehicle according to insurance anyways.

I totally understand that anything you to a car you are not going to get the value back out of. What I don't want to happen is have 24,000 dollars in a car (not likely to happen) and it be worth 500 according to KBB and get that amount in insurance money. That would devastate me.

 

Your 67 is worth more than 20k. Just pray that your garage doesn't collapse, or burn down, or car itself starts on fire, or gets stolen. You'll be saying "why didn't I take the extra coverage", when you won't be able to replace what you have.

 

These things could happen. and I would be out 10K, I knowingly take the risk. The insurance company is betting it will not happen if they are only charging a $115 per year more. Most people are better off using that money to invest in Smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. My smoke alarms are net worked so the one in the house will go off if the one in the garage does. Yes it is a pain shutting it off every time I weld but I like it better then insurance.

Like I said it depends on the person.

 

Cars are considered consumable if they are used daily. This means they go down in value. Also there is a risk you take every time you drive a car on a public road. What you have are talking about was played out in the court system 50 years ago. Example: Kelly blue book value is $4000 on a 2006 Pony car. The car has higher miles and the owner decides to keep the car instead of buying a new one. He spends $2500 at a local dealer putting on new tires, new struts, new brakes 4 wheel alignment. Bang he get rear ended on the way home. Guess what he gets from the insurance? 4K. All the above is considered normal maintenance and is assumed to be done in the blue book value. You can argue upgrades like stainless exhaust but you never get 100% of the cost of the upgrade. At best you will get the difference between Stainless verse stock if it is very recent.

If you end up with a lot of upgrades you can turn the rules against the insurance company. If they claim your car is worth stock value they can not say the totaled car is worth more then any other totaled car. So you buy the car back for next to nothing and part it out OR buy a Stock version of your car and use all your upgraded parts. We have a member who parted out his SS and got all most book value after the insurance company totaled it and another member who went out and found a V6 body for next to nothing and put his drive train into that with a ton of upgrades as he went.

 

Gorn,

That by far makes the most sense to me. That is kind of what I already thought in my head. Keeping the car, parting it out, and getting another used up car and replacing with my parts depending on where I am in the build. maybe I will get another classic to truly drive on the weekends in my lifetime. That is just not what kind of guy I am.