If you’ve spent any time browsing our online car auctions here at RAW2K, you may already be familiar with the various salvage categories. To give you a quick refresher; when a car is written off, it’s generally placed into one of four categories by the Association of British Insurers. These categories include Category A, Category B, Category N and Category S. We recently went into detail about Category U vehicles, which are less common. Another less common salvage title is Category X, which you won’t tend to find a lot of in our own online auctions here at RAW2K. So what is a Category X car, and should you end up buying one?
What is a Category X car?
Essentially, it’s considered by some to be one of the most desirable salvage categories, but often doesn’t appear as an individual label. A Category X car has been subject to an insurance claim, but often while sustaining minimal or zero damage. Most commonly, this is because the car has been stolen, eventually causing the insurance company to pay off the owner. Stolen cars are sometimes found again after this happens, at which point they become the property of the insurance company and become Category X cars.
Not an awful lot of stolen vehicles are recovered with no damage whatsoever, but many are easily repairable, and can become perfectly roadworthy. They may have been repaired strictly in accordance with manufacturer specifications. Whatever the case, this detail is not recorded on the HPI register, so be aware there may be a gap in the vehicle’s history if you go to buy it.
Category X cars usually come from one of two sources - either directly from the manufacturer, or the insurance company who’s repossessed it.
Should you buy a Category X vehicle?
As with the purchase of any auction car, really that’s down to you! Category X cars are relatively rare, and they’re not always strictly recorded as such, depending on who’s selling them. You might find that private vendors don’t use the term very much, and sometimes they’re known to be rebranded to Category N cars. (Whether this is legal or not depends on who’s doing the rebranding.)
The fact that they’re not HPI registered can make it more difficult to look into the history of an individual vehicle, which may hinder your research process - always an important part of buying any used, seized or salvage vehicle! However, if you’ve got mechanical knowledge and you’re confident that you can repair any problems that may arise or exist with the car - or it’s a low-risk purchase for you - then it may be worth considering. As with many of these instances, it really depends on your individual level of skill and knowledge when it comes to cars!
We generally don’t stock Category X cars here at RAW2K, and we never stock Category A; the latter are far too badly damaged to be of any use to even the most enterprising of our customers! Instead, our vehicles range from the partially-salvageable Category B titles all the way to potentially lucrative Category N. You just have to know what you’re looking for! We’ve got vehicles from leading manufacturers such as Ford, Mercedes and Volkswagen, and plenty more. Why don’t you take a look around, and see what you can find?
