All kinds of odd things about insurance - one thing I hadn't realised untilit affected me was that when an insurace company says a car isn't worth the cost of repairs and writes it off, that needn't be the end of the story.   

A few years ago I had my car vandalised while it was parked - door panels dented and so forth. It was mechanically unaffected, and I don't much care about looks in a car, so when the insurance company said it was a write-off because of the cost of all teh panel beating, I used the money to patch it up. I then reinsured it with the same company, after an MOT, and drove it happily for some years until it died.

I've just done a check on my current insurers, and found to my satisfaction that what I'm paying, to a company that has always treated me very fairly, is pretty close to the low end of the range - and the high quotes for precisely the same level of cover is literally ten times what I'm paying.