Our beautiful Pontiac was rearended, NEED HELP
 

My first post and a sad one. Our beautiful 1997 Pontiac Bonneville SSE 40th Anniversary edition was rearended by an SUV at 55mph. I'm having real problems with the insurance company, they don't seem to want to give us fair compensation.

This car was one of the 40th Anniversary cars. It was decked out with every option except no moonroof or sunroof. Only 1521 of these cars were made, and while not the rarest of rare cars, our insurance company is trying to compare it to a regular 1997 SE, not even an SSE let alone one that had all the options or one that was a limited edition.

Can anyone help? I've run some numbers at edmunds and NADA, but even there you can't key in all the features or the fact it was a special anniversary car. I loved that car, it only had 63,000 miles on it, was mint and we babied it. Can anyone help us determine the real value of this care with some evidence for the insurance company. We only want what the car is worth, but it is worth more than they are offering.

Thanks in advance.

So sorry to hear of the news. I was thinking about buying a 97 40th Anniv. SSE a couple weeks ago. It's a gorgeous car. Is the car totalled? Hope you can get it fixed. I hate it when sh** happens to such nice cars. :cry:

One word:

DEALER.

The dealer will expect you to come back to them for a replacement vehicle after payoff, so they'll do everything they can to help you. Many of the options on our car can be found in the BACK of the Kelley Blue Book. That's the only way to book it correctly. Go to the dealer with your VIN, and ask someone in sales to help you out.

Good luck!

(btw, when I bought mine, booked correctly it was $11k........the dealer had it listed at $9somethingK, I paid $5650......it pays to know).

The insurance company will try and lowball you, just like you would do when purchasing a car. You must expect to negotiate a fair price. Provide pricing evidence with similar cars for sale and also using guides like www.kbb.com.

One thing to remember - the value of the car is different depending upon the individual. I guarantee you that my car is the most valuable to me.

Mostly rear end damage, but enough to have the insurance company want to declare it a total loss.

Damn that's a friggin shame. I'd fight till you get what you deserve. I hope that doesn't happen to me or I'll :cry: and :banghead: and :uzi: myself

Great idea, I'll go to the dealer tomorrow. $9,000 is around what they are offering, but I did ask for the comp sheets. This is the actual workup they use. You know this car is equipped with so much, and they compared it to an SE and only gave us the options of the power passenger seat, leather seats, CD and Bose Premium Sound System. I had written them a letter with a list almost two pages long. I don't expect miracles, but I haven't been able to find one for sale in the US. So I just want fair compensation since I won't be able to replace it for awhlie.

Thanks for the link, I checked there, edmunds.com does a bit better on the pricing as they allow to add in some options KBB doesn't. But there still are so many on this car that were special with that edition. Maybe I'm expecting to much.

Ask them why!! They say it is a SE when clearly it is a SSE and according to many documents valued higher. This is alone one good indication of there intent to rip you off. They will claim stupidity or a generalization do to rule1426 it does not exist. lol

They are hoping there generalization of the cars lowest value if reduced to the lowest ( based on availability, ya sure that’s the excuse they love to use) they will be able to not only right the car off but reduce final cost further. get ready to get serious fast. If you hit them hard fast they will understand you mean business. Otherwise they will play the used car salesman game for as long as it takes to wear you down.

Ty

I'm with you and won't allow this to happen. I've just gone over their evaluation with a fine tooth comb, and all the comps are 97 SE's not a single SSE in the bunch. And the SE comps were pretty stripped down. So I've already got a call into the adjuster's supervisor and will follow it up with a letter. Plan to head down to the dealer's in the morning and get the info about true value of car.

Think that upsets me the most is that we won't have this great car. Sure its a car, but at 55 mph, our car really held up. We were hurt, but not anything like we could have been. Thanks to everyone. I'll have to tell my husband about this forum. We still have another Bonneville, we've owned three, great cars.