I recently had a 'classic' insurance issue with my e31. It is insured by one of the Classic insurers that I've been doing business with for about 15 years. My wife was driving the e31 and the car was stationary near an intersection in the curb lane. A box truck started angling over toward the corner to turn left, and the left rear tire impacted her car just ahead of the right front wheel, significantly damaging the right front fender and tearing the front bumper off. Police indicated truck driver was fully responsible for the damage.
Took it to a very high end body shop, for estimate and repairs. Insurance company offered 75% of my stated value for repair (committed estimate was $1K higher than that figure). I complained since it was less than my insured value. They stated that if I wanted to consider the car totaled, they would pay me our agreed upon value and they would take the car and title, but their limit for repair of the car was 75% of the agreed value (minus my deductible). I decided to have it repaired and pursue both my $500 deductible and the other $500 from the truckers insurance. I've submitted my claim to them. I'm sure my insurance company will seek repayment for their outlay from the truckers insurance as well.
Explaining all this, as until a couple of weeks ago, I was unaware of the 75% max payment unless the car is totaled (in which case the car can always be bought back from the insurance company of course, but if repaired it will then have a salvage title).
The bottom line for me in this case is that I'm confident the car will be better when it gets back to me than it was 10 minutes before the 2 mile per hour collision, as this shop does fabulous work and all components will be new OE BMW parts - including the fasteners for those components.
Gary--
PS: The day I took this car in for repair was "BMW 8's day at that shop". They had an i8 come in shortly after my car for repair to the under-body. The owner had run over a pipe and it flipped up and damaged the carbon fiber monocoque. The BMW dealer said it wasn't repairable!!. Carbon fiber composite is of course like fiberglass composite and can be repaired - it just costs a lot more for materials and labor.
PPS: Follow on to the next post in this thread, part of the reason I posted all this was so others on this Forum who have agreed value Classic insurance might want to check the procedures for a high loss but not totaled car damage. If they wish to do that, they might post there info here for all to be aware.