When insurance wants to write off your car they do not own the car it's yours.
Yes it's very easy to write off a car that's much more than 6 years old. Bear in mind any garage quoting repairs to the most minor of 'fender benders' will quote £1500 before they even get out a can of touch up paint.
I had someone run into the back of my car a while back and totalled the front of her Ka on my tow hitch. The insurance were very prompt and very efficient at coming to look at my car to asses the damage and came back with an offer to settle my claim as they said it was not worth repairing.
Now the offer was just the glasses guide price for a typical car the age of mine but mine was an ultralow mileage example and it was one of those peaches you get off the production line which runs perfect so I was not over the moon about their offer and told them so. I told them I rejected thier offer and it was their client who had crashed into the rear of my car while i was stationary on a red light so it was totally down to them to rectify the damage and compensate me. We then entered the haggle zone and I got a better offer.
The car is mine and I do with it what I want it's not up to the insurance company to dictate what is done. any way the bottom line is I got a cheque very quickly for the amount we had negotiated and I still run my car.
The good bit though is that because the Ka has a huge whopping piece of plastic that crumples very nicely when a rather blunt solid object comes into contact with it basically there was no damage to my car other than a slightly bent electrics bracket on the tow hitch. The fact that there was a crack in the bumper and it was misaligned was actually due to a not particularly tidy installation of the tow hitch in the first place but hey if someone's going to run into the back of your car and offer a pretty poor price to compensate you claiming your car is worth a fraction of what it would cost to get a similar low mileage car then who am I to say no worries I'll not take your money.
The point is though Insurance is a rip off and they are far happier insuring nice new cars as they can charge a higher premium and make a better return. It's all a gamble and bookies don't loose
Occasionally though us punters can make a bob or two