Auto Insurance Claims: My First Accident...., cosmetic work, insurance company

Question
I have a car that I got from a buy here pay here, still paying on it and is worth about $3500.00, it was in an accident recently. My car was the car AT-Fault, hit someone from behind. The car still runs great, a little bit of hood and core damage, inside the hood looks okay from what I can see (the hood won't open). Now I had it estimated through the insurance company, and they estimated $1340.00 to fix. That's not including what else may be wrong once the hood is opened. I have a $500.00 deductible, but the agent states they could deem the car to be totaled (once under the hood) if it's to costly to fix. Now my question is the car still runs and there's nothing leaking,everything sounds okay. I may have someone that can fix the car (cosmetically) for not as much, I understand its best to make sure but I don't have the transportation to and from work as well as money to get a new vehicle. What should I do? Pay the deductible and hope car is salvageable, but take the chance to find out or should I just have the cosmetic work done because the car still runs and wing it???.. Please help me out! 1st timer!!!

Answer
Hi Tanya,

In order to determine what the car actually needs, you will need to get it to a body shop of your choice. Once there you should instruct them to do a "tear down".  That means to get the hood open and assess the the damage and write a complete estimate. Show the body shop the estimate from the insurance company so they can determine if it is enough money to complete the repairs. If after a complete estimate is done the cost of the repairs is at or above 75% of the value of the car, the insurance company will etermine it to be a total loss. You should tell the body shop that you want to try to keep the costs below the 75% threshold if they can and still properly repair the car. If not there is not much you can do.

I hope this helps
Richard Hixenbaugh