Advice/Venting: My car was destroyed by hail
So we had baseball-sized hail suddenly come through my city a few days ago, and everyone at my work got to watch our cars get destroyed from the front windows. I opened a claim immediately after the hail stopped and could go take pictures, but still haven't heard anything other than that an agent was assigned.
City-wide, body shops are already talking about having a year-long backlog and having to triage repairs that don't affect immediate drivability. I've heard people talk about them being totaled already. Rental cars are hard to come by, because they not only have huge demand but had damage as well. The county is petitioning FEMA, because houses were damaged as well.
I'm just in a depressive waiting state, where I don't know how things will start to play out yet, with my undrivable car sitting at the office with trash bags taped over it while I work from home. And my old backup car (almost 20 years old), which was slated for one of the stepdaughters to receive once she gets her license, also had extensive damage making it unsafe to drive. My fiancée's car survived, being on the other side of town at the time, but she has a very busy schedule to the next few weeks.
I had the realization that every car I've ever bought myself was just destroyed, and I get fairly attached.
The Civic Sport Touring (2017), I still owe about $4000 on and expected to pay off this year. It's thoroughly dented across the whole body, with a completely shattered (to the point it's opaque) windshield, broken mirror assemblies, 2/3 cameras are probably broken, a tail light is broken down to the LED board, and the moonroof assembly appears to be bent and sagging slightly, probably from the roof and side parts being bashed so heavily. Not sure how much water got in during the ensuing torrential downpour.
Realistically, it being to totaled seems likely, given the cost of many of the parts. Which means I'm going to be stuck buying new, because used ones are a relative rarity (I jumped to buy mine when it showed up in stock) and there's barely a price difference these days.
I'm curious if anyone else here has had experiences with that sort of thing or knows what to expect.
Start looking for used cars yesterday, I guess, would be my advice. Might manage to beat the onslaught of people waiting for their insurance to pay out, so if you can front the cash, absolutely do it.
RIP your baby, too, I know Id feel the same.
Yeah, I've started looking a bit and exploring options. Realistically, I can't really get a comparable vehicle without an insurance payout right now, unless I want to be stuck with high monthly payments even after that comes in.
But, more optimistically, that model of car is usually unobtainium on the used market and goes for far too close to the price of new ones. And the dealer has several of those coming in. So I'll at least have the opportunity to go for one of those, assuming the payout less the remaining loan amount is a good starting down payment. I'm very glad I was aggressively overpaying on that. (It was a four year loan and I came close to knocking it out in a two year span.)
At least my company is understanding about office attendance and I can work from home without their usual percentage-in-office requirement as long as I keep management in th loop.
Ah cool at least youve got a plan lol
Ive got this 2000 honda and I started working from home during covid so I really just never had any need for a newer car, I only drive this car once or twice a week. If something happens to this car my plan is to rely on my husbands for a bit while I look for a 2018ish honda fit with a manual trans bc I read up on it and a honda fit is an almost 1:1 replacement for my honda, which is really hard to find, as no one sells manual trans cars in the us any more. My honda is just a commuter car with a 1.6L engine and the honda fit is an almost exact match for that, just the body style is different, my honda is a coupe.
That's why the OP's situation makes me so sad... I love Civics and it hurts to know theirs is borked, but also I have a '19 Si (6-spd) and it's AWESOME and I have no idea how I'm going to cope without manual transmission when I need another.
Also I'm super pissed that you can easily get a hybrid manual in Europe but not here. Might have to start saving up for one of those because importing with all the changes is super $$$. :(
I got one last long trip out of it, at least. Drove 12 hours to Colorado and proposed at the top of Pike's Peak in mid April. We took the train up rather than driving, though.
SIs and Type Rs are still on the new market in the US, and manual only, but I suspect they're also not super common used in most places.
I'm probably looking at the Hybrid Sport Touring. Different vibe than the turbo, but should be very familiar. I wish they'd keep the more aggressive Gen 10 styling though.
I highly recommend the Fit. My 20-year-old car is one, and it feels like something between a rally car and a golf cart. It's fun and absurdly practical: when I moved in and out of my dorm twice a year in college, I dropped the seats and carried just about everything in one trip.
My fiancée's precious car was also a 2017 Fit, and it was also a great car, up until it successfully protected its passengers from an Eclipse that ran a red light at 60+ mph.
Hm. Interesting.
I think my bank (TD, which doesn't even have physical branches where I moved) is known for having fairly poor rate offers for auto loans (~7% with excellent credit), and I've gotten 3.9-4.9% from Honda.
Refinancing is an intriguing idea though, but not something I've done before.
Not sure if you have any around, but I bank through a local credit union and they had better rates than the dealership when I bought my car ~5 years ago.
Not sure how relevant that is given how much has changed over the past 5 years, but maybe worth shopping around for better rates.
Yeah, I'll keep an out for that. That's actually how I bought my first car: it was old and cheap enough banks wouldn't do a small loan, so I opened an account at a credit union (not in this state) and got a small loan, which helped me get started building credit.
Damn I'm sorry to hear that, that really sucks.
Our town had a similar event when I was a teen. Not as severe, most cars were still safe to drive in. But body damage was substantial throughout the entire city, including dealership cars. We had full coverage and my car got written off as totaled since the body repairs were more than half what it was worth. But it still worked so I had a dented to hell beater until I moved cities after college.
Darn, I have no experience like what you have just gone through. Back in the late 90s I had a basement flood. I had a sump pump but the amount of water due to the weather system was overwhelmed by the volume of water. Point being that everything in the basement needed to be replaced, boiler, water heater, washer, dryer. The fun part of it all, I even lost an older car that was also flooded, I had it parked outside and can you imagine that the water was so high that the car got flooded. Anyway, I had FEMA etc., that supposively was to provide"relief" or "help". Almost 30 years and I am still waiting. It cost me an arm and leg as you can imagine but prompted me to help myself. Meaning prepare for the worst case scenario and take steps to lessen the impact. Since then I have had floods etc., but the impact for me on the personal side is less. So my advice is simple; education is expensive (ask anyone who is paying for it now!) but learn the lesson and prepare, prepare, prepare... This one is going to hurt, no doubt. I feel your pain. All I can say is that tomorrow is another day, and take steps for the tomorrow's tomorrow.
Are you also in NE Ohio? I only ask because we relaticely recently got golf-ball sized hail and it totalled a bunch of cars in the neighboring suburb. I don't have any direct suggestions as I'm not very experienced with car ownership myself, but if you do happen to be in the same area as me I can ask around with my local friends if they have any advice. Feel free to DM me about it if you wanna be private about your location to the rest of Tildes.
I sent a DM. Not the same place, but now I'm curious if it was the same storm at different times.