Alberto wrote:you say looked like...what`s happened?sold or crashed?
I was down in the Scottish Borders to test drive my new Coupe. I parked the saloon, quite legally, at the side of the main high street in a town called Earlston. There were other cars in front and behind mine, and the main road was fairly wide.
When I had finished test-driving the Coupe and agreed to buy it, I walked back to my car to find a few interested on-lookers milling about; one of them asked me if that was my car - I took a look at it and found it like this:
Doesn't look too bad in the photos, but there was a fair amount of denting and the paintwork gouges were fairly deep, and ran along the front wing and both doors.
I was told that a guy in a white works van had hit the car, stopped and asked a few people if they knew whose car it was, and then left the scene without leaving any insurance details or contact number, or even a note of apology. I could confirm it had been a van because underneath my car's front bumper was a section of black plastic trim that had obviously come off a Transit (or similarly-sized van). Nobody who saw it took any note of the van's registration number, which annoyed the hell out of me. And I think it must be my luck that Earlston seems to be the only place in the whole UK that doesn't have any CCTV cameras at all.
What is most interesting about this is that the car was parked on the opposite side of the road from where the van had been travelling - see that he hit my front wing and scratched the wing mirror? He had crossed the white line in the middle of the road and hit my car. My guess is that he was using a mobile phone or something at the time. There were no cars parked opposite mine, so it's not like he had to drive around one of them.
I called my insurance company, but without the other party's details, they'd have nobody to claim from, so I would lose my no-claims bonus and my excess, and all my future premiums would go up as a result of me having a non-fault accident
Typical, the insurers will pay out if you're hit by an uninsured driver and it won't affect your NCB, but if you get hit by someone who may or may not be insured, and they bugger off leaving no info, then you are screwed.
I also called the police, who came along and were generally very nice, but seemed to imply I shouldn't have parked there (even though it's completely legal for me to have done so), and said there's no chance of anyone being caught unless they come forward, and told me not to hold my breath for that.
Anyway, I was supremely pissed off - I'd been hoping to sell my car privately and use the cost of the sale towards the repayment of the loan I'd taken out to buy the Coupe.
I tried for weeks to find replacement panels from breakers' yards in an effort to bring the car up to re-sellable status. Unfortunately, the MOT ran out during that time, and I had to get her re-tested. The car failed because of excessive tyre wear, because of failed suspension parts, and because of the side indicator (where the van hit) having failed. To repair all the mechanical parts would have required hundreds of pounds, and to get the bodywork repaired would have cost at least four hundred more. For a car I was hoping to sell for about £1000 (as it was in near-perfect condition aside from that), I would have come away with about £200 profit at the most.
So, to the scrap yard she went
£120 was what I got back for her, plus I removed the stainless steel exhaust and the alloy wheels. The wheels got sold off for £70 to a 307 owner locally, who was looking for a set of wheels to put winter tyres on. I still have the exhaust but there is a young chap with a 1.8 petrol engine who is looking to buy it off me.
And despite the car having been written off and scrapped more than a year ago, the bloody ambulance-chasing lawyers and accident claims people keep sending me text messages, e-mails, and phone calls about "the accident I was involved in", because my insurance company sold my personal information to loads of these legal sharks. Because they're bastards.
That's my little story. That car is a beauty - keep her well-polished and slap on a set of nice alloys and you'll be all set. You had good fortune getting one with the leather interior already-fitted; I'd planned to do that on mine before I decided I wanted a more powerful car instead of just sticking more add-on bits to the one I had.
My name`s Albert,i am from Lithuania,just passed 27,at the moment live in Bolton (Greater Manchester). Decided to join English forum to get some usefull info about 406,as i am another lover of this pug,about 4 years ago had 1996 D8 2.0 petrol, now bought 2000 2.0 HDI,LX d9in blue (my fav colour) the only modification was done previous owner put black leather seats from another 406,bad points are them side parking dents 
see them on every 406 
White Van Man has a lot to answer for.
