Hi Ghallison,

After your car is involved in an accident, if the insurance company determines that the cost of repairs would exceed the Blue Book value of the car, the company will pay you the car's fair market value. At that point, the insurance company owns the car - in essence, they have purchased the car from you.

However, if you want to keep the car, the insurance company will deduct the "salvage value" (the money your insurance company could have recouped by selling your vehicle through a salvage vendor) from the amount they pay out to you.

To see how a typical insurance company calculates total loss value and for more information on keeping your salvage vehicle, check out some examples from Progressive at http://www.progressive.com/claims/total-loss.aspx .

I hope that helps!