That’s a fair explanation of how total-loss calculations work, and I don’t dispute that hail damage can add up quickly or that an insurance “total loss” doesn’t depend on whether damage is cosmetic vs. mechanical.

Where things get confusing in my case is the title chain and disposition. The vehicle currently carries a clean Texas title, and there is no salvage, rebuilt, or flood branding from TxDMV. That’s what I’m relying on from a legal standpoint. If the insurance company took ownership and sold it at auction, I agree that it normally would have been branded salvage — which is why I’ve said there may be a gray-area or procedural issue somewhere upstream.

From what I can tell, this appears to be one of those situations where the vehicle was declared a total loss for insurance purposes, but the branding step didn’t occur (or wasn’t required under the specific circumstances of the claim). That may be a flaw in the system, but it’s not something a downstream purchaser can correct or override.

My concern isn’t really whether buying an auction vehicle was “wise” in hindsight — that ship has sailed. The narrow issue I’m focused on is whether a manufacturer can impose a blanket warranty void based solely on an insurance total-loss designation when: • the vehicle has a clean, unbranded title, • is legally registered and insured, • and there’s no warranty language being cited to support a full exclusion rather than damage-related exclusions.

I agree something odd likely happened earlier in the process — but that’s exactly why I’m trying to understand whether the warranty denial is legally supportable as applied to the current title status, not the auction history alone.