At 11:25 PM 5/31/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear Mr. Drew,
>
>(1) I've read your eye-opening article "Auto Insurance
>Madness" that you've posted on the internet.  Thanks
>for the heads-up about what to expect, what to do, and
>what not to do.
>
>(2) I'd like to have a try, as you did, at avoiding
>the problems that you encountered by insuring my
>everyday-use car for an "agreed value".
>
>(3) Of course, I am having difficulty finding an
>insurance company willing to do that.  (I'm going to
>try to talk to Lloyds -- but expect that the cost will
>be prohibitive.)
>
>(4) Have you since learned anything new that would be
>of help to me in this respect?
>
>(5) Or would Mr. Terry Shaw of Automotive Legal
>Services likely be able to offer any addvice?
>
>Thanks again, Malcolm Watt (St. Louis)

It turns out that good agreed value insurance can cost so much that in the
space of a few years -- cannot remember how many, might be 8 or so, you
will have paid in extra premiums the entire value of the car.

Accordingly, agreed value insurance is a bet you are making that you will
destroy your van more often than once every 8 years, a bet I suspect few
would make.

To put this another way, our vans are pretty much uninsured but if you are
good at throwing a tantrum legally -- so no tantrum is visible to the other
party and everything seems very logical and reasonable -- you can correct
for that deficiency to some extent with standard insurance as outlined in
my article.

If you crash your van get the parts off of it and then install them on
another van you would buy.