I'm not sure if this is the same, but when I was talking to the people at the repair shop after my accident, they mentioned how I was lucky the airbag didn't deploy, and he even showed me this one SUV that had relatively minor damage but every single airbag had deployed, and said that it would probably be a "total loss" or a "salvage" because the airbags were so expensive.

So if that's enough for it to be a salvage, then it could have been damage that wasn't too bad, but the airbags were deployed so it was written off.

With that said, I would make sure the SUV has airbags. I have heard of scams where they disconnect the airbag warning light and all this other stuff to hide the fact there's no airbags.