Hello All!

I'm new to blogging but I'd like to tap the collective wisdom of my fellow PFB'ers who may know something about how car insurance works.

This past Thursday, my husband's car was hit while it was parked. The woman who hit him was 85 yrs old and (get this) following her home health aide. I only add this because according to her HHA, she should not have been driving but her doctor said she could. The woman never hit her brake and pushed my husband's car 15' forward damaging the car from the rear bumper to the front headlight.

Here is the problem. His car, his daily commuter, is a 1987 Ford Escort GT. The car only has 60,000 miles on it. It was the original "little old lady goes to bingo" car. It's a great little car but, as you can imagine, has no blue book value. The value to us is the car itself, the low mileage and what we've put into it. There are $700 worth of tires alone on that car. He recently bought a 2000 Ford Contour (getting a Ford trend here?) and we were going to take the Escort off the road and restore it, new paint, etc.

Of course, her insurance company wants to total it and only give us blue book. We can probably fight for a little more based on what he's put into it recently as we have receipts for everything but he's just heartbroken to have to do that. Although our insurance company has been great, we only have liability on it so there's not much they can do. They are covering the insurace on the rental her company approved us for simply because I have full coverage on my truck and our bikes.

OK, onto my questions. Has something like this ever happened to anyone and how did you handle it? Do we have any recourse besides totalling the car and taking the money? If they total it, what happens to it? Can we keep it and work on it ourselves? (we have more then enough room in our driveway) If we keep it, does it end up getting a salvage title?

I would appreciate any words of wisdom or just stop by and say hello!

Thanks all!