How written-off cars are dangerously resold for profit

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the way Category S and N codes, in particular, may be misapplied to some vehicles.

Tim Kelly, a former director of the Institute of Automotive Engineer Assessors and the founder of Motor Claim Guru, a company that advises insurance claimants, believes a conflict of interest involving assessors and sellers may mean some write-offs are being wrongly coded.

“I’m concerned about some salvage sellers also being responsible for assessing the write-off categories of the vehicles they are marketing,” he says. “They’re marking their own homework. Coding a Cat S car as a Cat N can boost its selling price.”

A spokesperson for the ABI said: “Under the code, a written-off vehicle is assessed by a qualified vehicle damage expert who will decide if it can be repaired or if it is too dangerous and needs to be scrapped. If anyone is unhappy with how an expert has assessed a vehicle, they should talk to the vehicle’s insurer, who can investigate any issues and make sure the code has been followed.”

Although an inspection of a repaired write-off before it can be returned to the road is not a legal requirement, there are companies that do inspect such vehicles, among them one called Autolign.

Until recently it was the only one recognised by HPI, which, on receipt of a successful report, would remove a Cat S or N code from a repaired car and move the vehicle to its Condition Inspected register.

Autolign also works with local authorities, checking the quality of repaired taxis. In total, it checks around 30 repaired vehicles per month across its three branches.

Worryingly, a spokesperson for Autolign said the company has seen an increase in enquiries concerning Cat B vehicles, which cannot be returned to the road. It does not inspect these or Cat A vehicles.

With such little scrutiny of repaired salvage, it’s not surprising that repairing Cat S and N write-offs is big business. Copart, a leading supplier of vehicle salvage, claims to sell almost a quarter of a million of them each year.

Buyers break some vehicles for spares but repair many more, which they resell to the public. One leading online marketplace is currently advertising almost 15,000 repaired Cat S and N cars. This figure also includes Cat C and D write-offs – an outdated classification that also means the cars can be repaired and returned to the road.

The question is: how well are these cars being repaired? The Institute of the Motor Industry offers a range of highly respected vehicle body repair courses and qualifications recognised by professional bodyshops.