How Can I Make Insurance Cheaper?

[MG CHRIS]

Try a mx5 when I was 19 only 3 years back it cost me just over 1k for an import uk ones are cheaper though, miles better to drive than a golf and you don't end up being the driver to drive all your mates around as its only got 2 seats unless you only have 1 friend.

[StottyEvo]

Riknos said:

ecsrobin said:

Your best bet is to leave it.

Take the £500 that you would have spent on the car
Take the insurance money you would be happy paying on the golf each year (I'm guessing £3kPA as the quote was over £7,000 so half seems a price you would have been happy with)

I assume you still have no NCD so save for 5 years NCD so that's £15,500 after 5 years to go from a corsa to something considerably better than a golf. You could also add in the annual modifying and maintenance costs on an old golf and you could soon have a very tidy sum just for driving a corsa for a few years. Plus you'd certainly have a better car than most of your 24 year old mates when you get to that stage.

This isn't what you want to hear. This isn't what you're actually going to do - but the man speaks sense!

By far the best use of your money, great man-maths there well done!

I disagree, mainly because insurance costs don't have to be what the OP is making out. A friend of mine paid £1100 on his GTR aged 20 with 0 no claims. Due to the depreciation of GTRs and low insurance costs he would've lost money if he had bought a nearly new Corsa instead.

[tomjol]

StottyEvo said:

I disagree, mainly because insurance costs don't have to be what the OP is making out. A friend of mine paid £1100 on his GTR aged 20 with 0 no claims. Due to the depreciation of GTRs and low insurance costs he would've lost money if he had bought a nearly new Corsa instead.

It's true that they don't have to be so bad, but to some degree at least it depends where the problem is in that risk-factor calculation.

For example, whatever I try to insure the price doesn't change that much, and after some experimentation and speaking to a few brokers it seems that the real problem is my postcode. The only solution is to move, and I'm not prepared to do that (yet).

EDIT: OP, I'm with the "just suck it up for a few years" brigade, I "had to" do it and by the time I finally got into something better it was like all my Christmases had come at once

[Daston]

Try specialists, I had a Mkiv Supra at 19 and was paying £1050 a year fully comp.

Do you have to use the car for work? Or can you just use it for domestic and pleasure?

I know times have changed but you should still be able to get it cheaper than that.

[Fort Jefferson]

Bullett said:

3. It's not the value of your car, it the value of everyone elses -

Well, it's personal injury claims actually. If he puts just one of his friends in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, it would cost millions.

[ferrariF50lover]

The MkIV GTi was a dreadful car which sold in massive numbers. Buy something cheap now and get yourself a MkIV at some later date if you really must have one. Paying £8k to insure a private jet would be a bloody liability. The same to insure a slow, heavy, boring insult to the legendary GTi badge is the sort of thing which really should result in a spell in Broadmoor.

Simon.

[thelawnet]

Just checked some other changes:

£2600 - base price with 60-year-old named driver, in my street in Surrey, Mk4 gti valued at £2k

Different car values give different premiums:
£500 - increases premium to £2644
£5k - reduces premium to £2426
£20k - reduces premium to £2211
£100k - few quotes returned
£50k - increases premium to £3000
£30k - £2333
£15k - £2151
£10k - £2218
£14k - £2070
£13k - £2070
£11k - £2070
£10,001 £2070
£14,999 £2070

So apparently there is a simple band from £10,001 up to £14999, which is cheaper to insure than anything cheaper or more expensive. So a good incentive to overinsure cheaper cars!

Starting from the £2070 SD&P 5000 miles quote,

SD,P&C - £2082
1000 miles - £2321
3000 miles £2197
4000 miles £2161
5000 miles £2070
6000 miles £2092

So apparently 5000 miles is cheaper than more OR less miles.

Moving on:

Day + night parking:
Car in unlocked or locked garage - £2787
Carport -£2070
Driveway - £2070
Road at/away from home - £1954
Office car park - £2273
Open/secure public car park - £2326
Locked compound - £2028

SD&PC - parked on road day and night £1964
SDP&C - parked on road night, office/public car park day £1964

So apparently it doesn't matter where you park it by day, but park it on the road by night.

So price now £1954 (original price without the named drive was £4600)

Changing job:

shelf stacker - £1954
Student living at home - £2530
mature student living away from home £2273
mature student living at home £2273
school student - £2766
unemployed - £2940
Librarian - £1761

[dapearson]

Maybe it's expensive because Mk4 Golfs handle so badly that you're likely to stack it?

And they're about as far from a GTI as it's possible to get - both in 2.0, 1.8 and 1.8T form.

Absolutely awful cars.

I had a 1.8T GTI about 11 yrs ago and it's the only car i've come close to having a big accident in all by myself. The engine has the characteristics of a diesel with the fuel economy of a V6.

Save your money!!!!

[StottyEvo]

thelawnet said:

Just checked some other changes:

£2600 - base price with 60-year-old named driver, in my street in Surrey, Mk4 gti valued at £2k

Different car values give different premiums:
£500 - increases premium to £2644
£5k - reduces premium to £2426
£20k - reduces premium to £2211
£100k - few quotes returned
£50k - increases premium to £3000
£30k - £2333
£15k - £2151
£10k - £2218
£14k - £2070
£13k - £2070
£11k - £2070
£10,001 £2070
£14,999 £2070

So apparently there is a simple band from £10,001 up to £14999, which is cheaper to insure than anything cheaper or more expensive. So a good incentive to overinsure cheaper cars!

Starting from the £2070 SD&P 5000 miles quote,

SD,P&C - £2082
1000 miles - £2321
3000 miles £2197
4000 miles £2161
5000 miles £2070
6000 miles £2092

So apparently 5000 miles is cheaper than more OR less miles.

Moving on:

Day + night parking:
Car in unlocked or locked garage - £2787
Carport -£2070
Driveway - £2070
Road at/away from home - £1954
Office car park - £2273
Open/secure public car park - £2326
Locked compound - £2028

SD&PC - parked on road day and night £1964
SDP&C - parked on road night, office/public car park day £1964

So apparently it doesn't matter where you park it by day, but park it on the road by night.

So price now £1954 (original price without the named drive was £4600)

Changing job:

shelf stacker - £1954
Student living at home - £2530
mature student living away from home £2273
mature student living at home £2273
school student - £2766
unemployed - £2940
Librarian - £1761

I've spent years doing the very same research

StottyEvo Earlier said:

say the cars value is high
4995 miles per year
Park on the street (not garage or drive)

Do one more test, change the start date of the insurance cover the further into the future the start date is, the cheaper the quote should be.

[Pet Troll]

Also the longer you have owned the car makes a huge difference, as does saying you own/have access to another car. The former can't be honestly altered though, but it's interesting that no matter whether you have driven it before or not, it is substantially cheaper to insure if you have owned it a couple of years.

[BritishRacinGrin]

MkIV Golf 'GTI' is not a GTI, it's a big heavy stodgy pseudo-barge with all of the thirst but none of the performance.

[TVR1]

But don't forget, it's not about an old car or your old age or cost of the car. It's the demograph of who is buying that car. A Mk 4 cheepo Golf is bought by who? A young, new driver. Therefore statiscally MK 4 Golfs are more likely to have crashes. It doesn't matter if you have 50 years of no claims-you have bought a car that statistically gets binned. Because it's an old car and is cheap-therefore is purchased by young drivers on a budget.

A case in point, me.
Ferrari 400i, £650, fully comp. 5000 miles a year and a reasonable postcode and on street parking. A Honda Civic, £250 value. Best I could get was £800 fully comp.

[thelawnet]

TVR1 said:

But don't forget, it's not about an old car or your old age or cost of the car. It's the demograph of who is buying that car. A Mk 4 cheepo Golf is bought by who? A young, new driver. Therefore statiscally MK 4 Golfs are more likely to have crashes. It doesn't matter if you have 50 years of no claims-you have bought a car that statistically gets binned. Because it's an old car and is cheap-therefore is purchased by young drivers on a budget.

A case in point, me.
Ferrari 400i, £650, fully comp. 5000 miles a year and a reasonable postcode and on street parking. A Honda Civic, £250 value. Best I could get was £800 fully comp.

As i pointed out above, 5000 miles and on street parking are optimal for reducing cost. I'm sure you could have got the civic insured a lot cheaper with the same parameters, and perhaps declaring it was worth say £2.5k rather than £250.

It's not that the ferrari is cheap to insure, it's that old sheds are high risk. A £250 car to the insurer says ' I don't care'.

Put a less ' I am a Lithuanian itinerant worker' pricing on your civic and you'll get a fair quote - cheaper than the ferrari.

[Petrolhead95]

TVR1 said:

But don't forget, it's not about an old car or your old age or cost of the car. It's the demograph of who is buying that car. A Mk 4 cheepo Golf is bought by who? A young, new driver. Therefore statiscally MK 4 Golfs are more likely to have crashes. It doesn't matter if you have 50 years of no claims-you have bought a car that statistically gets binned. Because it's an old car and is cheap-therefore is purchased by young drivers on a budget.

A case in point, me.
Ferrari 400i, £650, fully comp. 5000 miles a year and a reasonable postcode and on street parking. A Honda Civic, £250 value. Best I could get was £800 fully comp.

So what about the 1.8 Corsa SRi, which surely is more likely to be crashed by a young, new driver than a GTI, less than half the price of the GTI?

After doing about a thousand quotes, I've finally got them down to:

Golf GTI - £1,200 deposit, £690 a month
Corsa 1.8 - £190 deposit, £130 a month

Which is odd considering the Corsa is associated with boy racers more than a GTI, is actually faster and newer as well. I found putting that the car is on the road at night, away from home is £300 a year cheaper than putting it in a locked garage. Insurance makes no sense at all.

[StottyEvo]

Petrolhead95 said:

Golf GTI - £1,200 deposit, £690 a month

This is frustrating, how can you possibly find a quote so high?

[DanielSan]

It won't get any better until you're 21, and then improves drastically by the time you're 25. I had an EP3 Type R as soon as I turned 21 and I was paying 1200quid on that a year 7 years ago. Sadly the one and only thing that makes insurance cheaper is age. I'm paying 480quid on my STI Impreza now.

[Petrolhead95]

I'm happy with the Corsa quote. Luckily for me, being on a modified car insurance is actually cheaper than normal car insurance (again, how does that make sense?). Staying away from power modifications for the moment, just sticking with brakes, suspension wheels and tyres for the time being.

[cj2013]

Petrolhead95 said:

I'm happy with the Corsa quote. Luckily for me, being on a modified car insurance is actually cheaper than normal car insurance (again, how does that make sense?). Staying away from power modifications for the moment, just sticking with brakes, suspension wheels and tyres for the time being.

It doesn't have to make sense, it will be calculated using their own algorithm.

For example, I bet more people damage their car driving in and out of said garage than cars get damaged or stolen when parked on the street. Similarly, other risks are calculated based on statistics and so on; hence why it doesn't need to make 'sense'.

[Pet Troll]

cj2013 said:

It doesn't have to make sense, it will be calculated using their own algorithm.

For example, I bet more people damage their car driving in and out of said garage than cars get damaged or stolen when parked on the street. Similarly, other risks are calculated based on statistics and so on; hence why it doesn't need to make 'sense'.

It's more a theft statistic, if the car is parked on a drive or garage then there's no prizes for guessing which house the keys are kept in, if it's parked on the road then which house on the street has the keys?

[cj2013]

Pet Troll said:

It's more a theft statistic, if the car is parked on a drive or garage then there's no prizes for guessing which house the keys are kept in, if it's parked on the road then which house on the street has the keys?

I guess - I know that the garage one is due to people damaging cars driving them into the garage itself, it's come up before (somewhere in my mind...)