Crash - Prius Meets Suburban

["David M. Stensland" <stensland@peakpeak.com>]

The following story came through on the Prius group at Yahoo.com.  It’s
appropriate for this list because it’s a first hand account of one body
shop’s fear of “all those electronics and wire connections” in a modern
automobile.

There's an excellent photo of the vehicle at the picture link listed in
the article.

-Dave

From:  "deptulo" <drit1@h...> 
Date:  Sun Jul 21, 2002  8:25 am
Subject:  Prius wreck & aftermath


At one year old & 46,000 miles our Prius was struck by a 
Chevy Suburban from the side in the front by someone running a red 
light. Picture at: <http://members.cox.net/drit1/DSCF6040002c.JPG>
The whole front end forward from the spring towers was offset about a 
foot. No injuries to the driver & the ICE still ran, but leaked a 
little coolant from the radiator when running. The body shop said "no 
problem" & gave a $5,000 estimate to repair. After several weeks the 
insurance company finally called & said they had declared the car a 
total loss with the final repair estimate being over $16,000. It 
seems that in order to repair the damage, the drive train and "all 
those electronics and wire connections" would need to be removed & 
nobody but the dealer felt capable to tackle this. Thus the car would 
have to go back & forth between the dealer & the body shop several 
times. After that, nobody, including the dealer could guarantee that 
the electronics (and maybe some of the other electronic devices) had 
survived, so some portion of the cost to repair/replace them was 
included in the estimate. So in about a week we'll see what comes 
next - a value will be assigned to the car. A sad end.