Age of a vehicle works for and against you: Yeah, sure, it seems like cost less to replace your vehicle, but it also lowers the threshold where they actually total your vehicle vs repairing it. Totaling a vehicle is based on a percentage of cash value (changes from company to company, but let's pretend it's 80% for sake of discussion). Your car is worth $10k, means you have to do $8k worth of damage before they total it out and send you a $10k check. If it drops to $9k value, you only need $7,200 in damage to trigger them totaling it out and sending a full value check.