Car totaled by hail. Keep or relinquish?

Are you the original owner? If so, that make me lean towards keeping it especially if you are not in a place to swallow a new car payment. There is a value in my mind about knowing the true maintenance history.

 

Golf balls have dents all around the surface because it improved its aerodynamic in transit. Your Prius’ co-efficient could now be lower by .1 vs stock.

 

I'd take the money and buy it back. Invest that money and drive that clunker until the wheels fall off. If your a swerd investor, you may make enough money to buy a new car outright or at least put up a good down payment.....

 

Yes, as long as the damage doesn't bother you, I'd buy it back ...you might get a few more years out of it!

 

Seven Grand will get you a generation too in many places that will carry you until you're so bored you'll change the vehicle by peer pressure. At least that's how it's been here as soon as we got out of the gen threes. The threes were bought to appease women without much thinking it's cute and it's the right color not.

 

If I woke up in your shoes....the first thing I would do is give you your shoes back.
Then If I'm understanding your situation I would put the $5k into a car repair account and cash flow anything that happens to the car between now and 250k miles.

Normally I would never give this advise to car owners that do not DIY, BUT you're aware enough to have already had the EGR work done.
Perhaps even correctly.
This means that if you've paid some passing attention to the maintenance guide and you're doing regular 5,000 mile oil changes (or paying to have them done) then this car will probably give you another 50-100k of service.
You've also already blabbed to your insurance company about the hail damage and you now have a hull-loss incident in your record - so driving a car without comp and collision for a few years would be to your financial benefit, and let's face it.....
7K isn't going to buy you a more reliable car than the one that you're already driving - and you live in one of those nearly uninhabitable states where the weather can kill people a couple of months out of the year!

Reliability > Aesthetics!
Besides.....you already drive a Prius.
HOW much worse does it look with a few dimples in it?

Best of luck!

 

My 94 civic any of the Corollas here and all the gen2 here will out go that car easily . I'd even bet even if I didn't change the oil and one of my Prius it would go until that gen 3 blew up and then I would change my oil and go another $150,000 mi in the two almost guarantee it but we can't do things like that guarantee if that is.