Tim,

If there is no frame damage ... and you can find a donor car ... repairing your Brick is not out of the question. The fenders ... lights and other front pieces are pretty much bolt on. I had $6800 dollars in damage to the front of my daughter's 86 245. (Book valued at the time at $3700)I had a rear ended donor car and swapped and painted the parts myself. The car is white so that helped ... metallic paint is a lot tougher to match.

Anyway I did a respectable job of getting it back on the road ... doesn't look half bad and the total repair cost was under a grand. (that included buying an air compressor and a good paint gun) If you can find low or no cost parts and can get the painting done inexpensively ... there's no reason it can't be saved. If there's a Pick and Pull wrecking yard near you ... they can be a great source of good, low cost parts. Here in my neck of the woods fenders ($26) Headlight assemblies ($38) Hoods ($26) and so forth.

Totalled does not mean totalled if the frame is straight and the damage is confined to easy to replace front end parts. I fixed my "totalled" Brick and two years later my daughter drove it off to school in WI ... nearly two thousand miles east of here. It's still on the road and I hope will be for years to come.