I had the unfortunate happening of being run off the road by a drunk driver the other night.The XKR was stuffed into the front porch of a house.
If they don't total it, should I take it to a local shop that I know with an excellent reputation? Or, would I be better off taking it to the Jag dealer and letting them do everything on it? of course I want everything from the drive train to the body fixed as needed.

 

Bad luck, at least you're OK.
I'd go to a Jaguar dealer - if your insurance will cover it.
With that amount of damage though.....

 

I'm glad you are O.K. But, I would get checked out by a doctor... and you should miss a week or so of work due to soreness. If the insurance co. thinks there may be some lasting injury, they may be more willing to deal with you in good faith. If they see it's only the car that was damaged, chances are they will SCREW you.
Ask me how I know this....

 

I agree with Steve, take it to a Jaguar Dealer if your insurance company agrees to pay for all the damages. If the damage is to great they will probably write off the car and you can buy another one. But beware, most insurance companies will only give you somewhere between wholesale to blue book for your car. This happened to one of our club members. They had a 1998 XK8 with 32K miles and was in like new condition. The insurance company wrote off the car and offered them wholesale price. I think they are still fighting with the insurance company to get more money.

Bill N
03 XKR

 

Personally, I would take it to the local shop with an excellent reputation? After being in the collision repair industry I've found out the bottom line for dealers is to make money selling cars, the body shop operation is a side note. A lot of small independent shops, main business is auto body repair. Most of the area dealers including our luxury car dealer has poor quality collision repair shops. The big dealers usually have a bigger turn around of repair technicians. This is only my opinion, but I've seen the shabby repairs from the dealers over a twenty year period.

 

Find a dealer that doesn't have a colision repair facility. ASK them who they use - a lot of them farm out body work.

With my ex's BMW, we dropped it off at the dealer after a rear end colision. (Car was leased and had 8k miles on it). BMW serivce advisor promptly wrote a r/o to estimate colision damage.

Turns out 8 days later we find out from our ins rep, that the car was now at some body shop 20 miles out of the way. Apparently they subcontracted the work to their Porsche dealer "sister store" who RE subcontracted the work to this local body shop. After going down there and talking to them and looking at the car torn down, we got them to do some pretty decent work.

Do NOT accept "recycled" parts.... State farm and a couple others play this trick alot. They force the body shop to call lkq - that's their recycled parts vendor, and try to source whatever structural and sheet metal parts they can find and price the job according to that. You dont want the car to have repainted used parts.

Take care,

George

 

I would use a high end body shop over a dealer anytime. If you specific, and can get Insurance to authorize OEM Jag parts, then you have the best of both.

 

Up my way most dealers outsource the hard work. As was suggested, find out who they use and go there...

 

As written by Androulaki
sI've been out of the collision repair business since 1989 so I don't know if this practice is still going on or not with the auto industry. A lot of the parts we would receive from the major auto makers were assembly line rejects, fenders, hoods, quarters. a lot of the time we would rather install a front clip from the recycling yard than put new parts from the dealer. We had a late model Buick, hit in the front When replacing the hood it was welded 3/4" out of square. returned to dealer, and the next two we received were the same. We had doors welded off and many parts came with damage, that they would pay us to remove. At the present I'm installing wide bodied quarters on a Subaru for my son and these factory quarters are good.