Disposable Car

[nsmitchell]

Originally Posted by Kal-El

Remember that the definition of "totaled" isn't whether or not a car can be fixed or not but rather what the repair cost is vs. the value of the car. With a car like the Yaris, the reletive value is already low so fixing damage from a 20 mph crash may simply not worth it.

But if you have equally severe damage on a $100K Mercedes, then the repair is justified even if that repair costs $25K.

So to mastaofdisasta and his post, would you spend $9,000 to fix a $13,000 car? I would think not. That's what people mean by disposable. We are not relating the Yaris to a cheap product that we throw away every year. In fact, many of us plan on driving it 200,000-300,000 miles which it will do easily.

Exactly.

Also, the car protects you by crumpling up like an aluminum can by design, this causes more damage to the car, but protects the people inside.

In the old days the car would not be damaged much in an accident. They would just spray it out and get it ready for the next victim.