Revive! Auto Innovations has analysed the current salvage vehicle market and found 34.9% of Category N vehicles could have been repaired using SMART (Small to Medium Area Repair Technique) processes.
Following a Freedom of Information request issued to the DVLA to reveal the number of cars written off last year, along with analysis of the salvage vehicle marketplace, Revive! Auto Innovations found of the 262,339 cars which were Category N (CAT N) written off in 2025, 91,556 were scrapped unnecessarily by insurance firms rather than being repaired through the brands services.
Mark Llewellyn, Managing Director of Revive!, commented: “It’s surprising to see the sheer number of vehicles sent to salvage auctions that Revive! could have repaired saving both the insurer and the owner a significant amount of financial and mental distress.”
Category N vehicles are those which have been involved in an accident or the owner has made a claim against their insurance, and the Insurer has assessed the damage to be greater than is economically repairable.
Revive!’s analysis of the salvage vehicle market showed many insurance assessors overestimate the various factors going into repairing a vehicle, including the cost of repairs, availability of parts and the significance of the damage incurred to the vehicle. Many of the vehicles assessed by Revive!’s team had only minor scrapes and dents which could have been repaired by the company’s network of over 250 IMI accredited technicians.
Instead, the vehicle was written off leading to a reduction in value should the car be resold following repairs. In many cases repaired categorised vehicles are valued at up to 50% less than undamaged models. There has reportedly been an increase in the number of categorised vehicles on sale, currently there are over 13,500 on Autotrader alone, with vehicles ranging from entry level Vauxhall Corsas to high end Lamborghini Huracans.
Mark concluded: “It is strangely counter intuitive for car insurance providers to not explore all the options for repairing a damaged vehicle. Paying out on policies and categorising the vehicle for the most minor damage costs vastly more than a Revive! SMART repair would cost the insurance company. Especially when a Revive! repair can be carried out on the customer’s driveway in just a few hours, negating the requirement of a courtesy car while the repair takes place.”
