The car was declared a total loss in Oregon, Sept.10 2014. Lots of Russians here buy salvage cars from the salvage auctions and put them back together as well, there is good money in it if you do it right. I've done it myself a few times, but always found it was way more work than just buying a non-write off for a good price and doing a decent job making it a nice car to resell. But none of that matters now as you own it! A hybrid car will get written off by an insurance company easier than a regular car, as they are concerned with liability if they repair it etc, and hybrids are still a mystery to most people so I find they tend to err on the side of caution and write them off where as the same damage on a regular car would have been fixed. Good luck!
As for the cash - when I sold my '55 Chev years ago the guy that bought it was, er, "alternatively employed", and paid $10k in rolled up $5s, $10s, and $20s! I literally ran out of pockets to put all the money into. To this day I don't think I've ever had a bigger smile on my face than I did driving home from that ha ha
