A:

How much you get may depend on whether you are seeking reimbursement under the collision portion of your auto policy or whether you are dealing directly with the defendant’s insurance company.

If your car is not totaled, generally you are entitled to the cost of reasonable repairs and associated expenses (such as a reasonable rental car payment), as well as the diminution value of your car in its repaired state.  “Diminution” is the difference between what the car was worth right before the crash and what it is worth once fixed.  Note that under nearly all collision policies in Virginia, your own insurer will exclude diminution from the amount they have to pay you.  Therefore, under your collision coverage you would get the cost of reasonable repairs, but you do not get the difference in market value of your car (the value of the car before the crash minus the value of the car as repaired).  Usually if you want to get the diminution value, you will need to do so through the defendant’s liability insurance company if someone else was at fault for the damage.
 
In contrast, if your car has been totaled, or is a total loss, you are entitled to use the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) yellow or black book to assess the market value of your car.  You are only entitled to recover the value of your car, not the full amount of money you borrowed to purchase the car.  You are not entitled to have your entire car loan paid off as much of that loan may have been interest and your car has likely depreciated in value since its purchase.

The following is a link to the Virginia Code section that allows various sources for assessing the fair market value of your car:  http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+8.01-419.1.