@sadphonics I think you might be right but If he was paying his insurance on the car and they continued to take the money on a car they considered a write off they might have been paying him for the lost value of the car.
@Migli you'd be surprised. We had a massive fire 5 years ago that destroyed about a quarter of the city. There were more cars than I could count that had melted plastics, lights, cracked paint etc
this happened to me too. taxi driver hit me. insurance said my 2008 car wasn't worth fixing so they paid my dad for the value of the car which they deemed to be 7k. but then my uncle knew a guy who fixed it for 3k
@devilishgenius I can not count how many times car repair or other general maintenance things have been a non issue because of my uncle, wether it was him or a friend of his. Handy family members really are a blessing lol
I'm pretty sure you're supposed to declare that it's a salvage title vehicle when getting insurance again and you typically only getting offered liability-only insurance to cover injuries to you or others. In fact you have to go through steps of getting a 'rebuilt title' with some states requiring thorough inspections. But Texas probably has different rules around this so idk.