ILL WINDS (& WATER) OF CHANGE; The collector car world was rocked by hurricane season. Will it change how we collect cars?(News)

Byline: DUTCH MANDEL

Though some three months have passed since the havoc of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the collector car world only now realizes the depth of financial-and emotional-damage.

The storms might also trigger a change in the way the collector car business writes insurance.

"I would estimate there were a couple of thousand collector cars lost in all,'' said McKeel Hagerty of Hagerty Insurance, a company that specializes in writing policies for sports and collector cars, as well as for the recreational marine industry.

To date Hagerty has 419 Hurricane Katrina claims, with 75 percent as total losses. There are 275 claims in and around New Orleans, with an average value of $23,000-or $6.3 million. The top loss: a Ferrari 550 Maranello. "And we had some Bentley Continental GTs and a couple of Jaguars in the $75,000- to-$80,000 range,'' Hagerty said.

Hurricanes Rita and Wilma "were peanuts'' compared to Katrina; Hagerty has close to 100 claims for those two storms combined.

Hagerty is one of several companies that write collector car insurance. Of all cars on the road, some 570,000 are estimated to have been destroyed in the storms.