A girl in a 78 Camaro clipped me while she was backing out of her driveway.
She was going to hit me square on the sliding door but with the tremendous
acceleration of the diesel <g> I got away with only damage to the rt rear;
side marker and tailight OK, tailgate still opens. Total damaged area is back
of the seam on the quarter panel with a 2" slice through the sheetmetal where
her spoiler got me. All in all not a big deal. I got an estimate from one of
the better body shops in town for $850 including tax and went into Farmers
drive in  claim service in Albuquerque expecting them to offer maybe $500 or
so and line me up with one of their "preferred shops". However their
adjuster, after about 10 minutes on his computuer, gives me a figure of
$1760!!! and says my 82 Westy is slightly over their break point for
totalling the vehicle!! At this point I'm wondering what my "buy-back" amount
will be. Since I only paid $1500 for the vehicle (but sank another 2k into
it) I think I could live with a salvage title.

Ken Hunter
82 Westy 1.9D
84 Jetta 1.5D