Insurance again.

[Keith Clements]

You will see an article in Sept Jowetteer from Footman James responding to salvage rights. The response sort of misses the point and shows no understanding of the construction or recoverability of a classic car. We rebuild classic cars from a heap of rust in many cases so a car damaged to Category A or B may not be a problem for a Classic Car restorer.

Obviously the assessor's views on Classic Car right offs is the one we want not those of the insurance company.

[Chris Spencer]

This is a significant point - your pride & joy that has been owned / rebuilt and part of the family since year dot - gets stolen or run in to by some idiot - and these events do happen - and the end result is some pen pushing fool sat at his desk who has no idea what he / she is talking about makes a judgement that the car is salvage and no you can not have the right to retain it as such.

What utter nonsense - the owner and like minded members of the club know these vehicles inside out and to have a vehicle written off because new parts / panels are no longer available or the fact that the insurance nominated repairer has little knowledge of what and where to obtain replacement parts is lunacy - I have personally wittnessed this happen - and to see even a non repairable car but with many salvagable parts go through the crusher is enough to reduce grown men to tears.

I understand that a lot of work has gone into the FJ / club relationship but I think FJ has now grown too large to care for a club of our size - and based upon the salvage rights issue & the fact that over the last 2 years my premiums have been raised by 200% - I have sourced my insurance with another specialist insurer - who has no problems with owner salvage retention whilst making a 50% saving against the premium that FJ were quoting.