how much to fight for from insurance

Another OOOPS! huh?

It's been said over and over here:
HAVE YOUR CAR APPRAISED BEFORE AN ACCIDENT!

Old Car Blue Books will place the value of an early 240 somewhere between $5500 and $14,000.

So if your's was a beater, then yeah, $5500 is fair...

Chances are it was better shape than that, so now you will have the unenviable task of proving it's worth. Check the archives within the last six months---there have been two success stories on similar circumstances.

Photos of the car before the wreck, RECEIPTS for work done during the restoration, nad the Old Car Blue Book will get you some headway.

Do not accept their first offer, and don't sign any releases before you talk witha lawyer.

BTW, who was at fault as determined by the AUTHORITIES?

you may want to consider...

contacting a lawyer for a suit against her---which will be fielded by her insurance company.
By rights, your insurance company will not pay you, they SHOULD sue her company for you, to recover your losses. But sometimes they need some coaxing.

Make sure you get some good prices off recent e-bay auctions for SIMILARLY CONDITIONED VEHICLES to show a "current private party transaction price"

This may be the difference between getting a check for the TOTAL REPAIR of your vehicle, or a SMALLER check for the totaled amount!
Our former club president had a rearender, and they were going to total his car out for around $3500. (Repair Cost was around $6K+)

He got an appraisal after the fact, putting the value of his car at around $14K. This got his car TOTALLY REPAIRED, as opposed to a total writeoff. Because the cost to repair the vehicle was less than 50% of the vehicles' value, they repaired it correctly, and he was driving it at the last convention!

Similarly, I had to get mine appraised after the government damaged it in shipment. They were going to pay me $1500 for the car, since they put no value on it. I had an appraisal in 89 of $5000 to $7000 and I got almost $2K for the repairs to the G-Nose. What I should have done was BUY A NEW G-Nose from Nissan, but like FOOL I didn't! DOH!

So yeah, reciepts, appraisals (from a REAL certified appraiser), and other documentation showing private party transactions all help when dealing with someone trying to figure out the value of the vehicle.
Good Luck man, let us know how it comes out!

Good advice here from everyone except Matt. Insurance companies are actually pretty amenable to coughing up more money if you can do the homework to show the worth of the car. They handle claims involving injuries and new cars with damages running well into the six or seven digit range and quite frankly they have bigger fish to fry than your little claim. They aren't trying to screw you or rob you, they just are busy and as far as they are concerned, the appraisal part of their job is done after they look in a blue book. If you do a little more work and nicely ask for a couple thousand more, it really isn't any skin off their back. If you want to change from that treatment, go ahead and just hint, like Matt suggests, that you are gonna throw in a bogus injury claim. THAT pisses them off....asking for a fair valuation of your car doesn't! Bogus or exaggerated injury claims and exaggerated damage claims are insurance fraud, and we all pay at least a third more for our insurance because of it, since that cost is spread among us. The insurance companies will hate you for it, they will dig in their heels about making any payment, and your name will go in their own shared database, so next time you need to make a claim, it will be back to haunt you. Because in their eyes, you aren't a claimant, you're a thief.

I agree with everyone but Matt and take a small exception to ghosttankers take on the amenableness of insurance companies. It's been nearly a year now and you can still get my wife's blood pressure to rise through the roof. After I wanted to strap on the six-shooters and ride into town, my wife said a cool head was needed. After 2 weeks she was ready to sign up for an NRA course in real gun control (hitting your target). We finally got what we wanted but only after we threatened them with a lawsuit. Records, appraisals, reciepts, copies of similar Z selling on autotrader.com, zcar, etc, didn't do it but a 2 paragraph letter signed by a lawyer got their attention real fast.

Don't as Tony so correctly stated sign anything unless your own lawyer tells you to. Keep control of your car. Do not let them take it. Get your own salavge quotes if you want to buy it back for parts. And if you get another Z or fix this one get it appraised. Your insurance company is paying out more money on new cars but remember that their first instinct is to say no and that their business slogan is "we screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you" Don't be the other guy....