A $4000 repair? Christ, you can buy another car for less. Lady needs to rethink her priorities.
From what I got from the article, she doesn’t have enough money for that repair, so possibly doesn’t have enough to buy a brand new car.
Not to mention if the car is insured, if the insurance is going to pay anything out at all (which I can see them not doing, because the kid was not a ‘listed driver’ and the insurance companies can be real arseholes about that stuff), then they’re going to pay for the repairs directly to the repairer, and make her pay an excess, not just give her money to go and get them done, or to get a new car.
Also, if the car’s on finance they won’t just let her write it off and buy a new one, and let her out of her payment contract. She’ll have to pay off the remainder of her loan/finance agreement, with or without repairing the car. Which either leaves her without a car and a bill she still has to pay, or leaves her with a large repair bill to cover. Unfortunately the story doesn’t elaborate on what her particular circumstances are. But there’s a lot more to it than just saying “Well, it’s going to cost four grand to repair this, time for a new car!”