I got the okay from my insurance company at the end of last week and went to the shop to check on it before they get started.
This particular body shop is the authorised repairer for the BMW and Jaguar Land Rover dealerships in my city. They are a business with a good name and I sent the car here at a risk, the work is expensive and I was preparing for a likely write off. But if they could do it, they would do it right.
So far they’ve been great. I called them while the car was being towed over to tell them its insured value and so that they would be mindful of the preliminary quote they send off.
Here is just the list of parts:
Some things like the boot lid, and bits and pieces of trim would have been too expensive, so we’re going for used parts. As far as I know they have a donor car in Sydney in about the same condition as mine. The boot lid will be stripped and repainted from scratch anyway so I don’t really care.
The rear bumper and every damaged chassis piece will be new.
I don’t want aftermarket tail lights either. I had bought a set for my old 320 and they lasted about 2 years before they started losing LED dots. I’ll probably end up ordering a set of originals from BMW and swallow the cost.
The damage inside. Luckily BMW uses short chassis rails with internal shocks, allowing them to be sacrificial with less overall damage.
At this angle you can see the vertical kink in the side of the body from the way it was compressed in the accident. They’ve planned for a large repair on the quarter panel here, but *hopefully* it will pop itself out when they get the car on the rack.
Around the corner was a Range Rover and a very dismantled X5.
And there it sits. Crumpled and dusty but so far safe from the scrap. Thank you to everyone who wished me well :D. I will be very relieved to get it back.