Small, fast, auto, £4k. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

[Vaud]

Try Saffron. There were helpful when my wife had only recently passed her test.

[Dave200]

Vaud said:

Try Saffron. There were helpful when my wife had only recently passed her test.

Thank you - Saffron were more competitive than the usual crowd, so very much appreciated (albeit with a £3,000 excess!). Oddly, Footman James wouldn't even quote for me alone on fairly mundane 'sporty' cars, so perhaps their issue is more location-based.

Edited by Dave200 on Wednesday 1st July 16:33

[Vaud]

Dave200 said:

Thank you - Saffron were more competitive than the usual crowd, so very much appreciated. Oddly, Footman James wouldn't even quote for me alone on fairly mundane 'sporty' cars, so perhaps their issue is more location-based.

Glad to be of help. Of note they were less competitive once she had a few years experience.

[Dave200]

Vaud said:

Dave200 said:

Thank you - Saffron were more competitive than the usual crowd, so very much appreciated. Oddly, Footman James wouldn't even quote for me alone on fairly mundane 'sporty' cars, so perhaps their issue is more location-based.

Glad to be of help. Of note they were less competitive once she had a few years experience.

Actually - hold the phones. They were very competitive for the TT quote (albeit with a £3k excess - I'll live), but I ran a couple of others through and they were laughable - £7k for a Golf GTi!!

I just wish there was an insurance company that could explain the rationale behind the seemingly random prices...

Edited by Dave200 on Wednesday 1st July 16:55

[Vaud]

Dave200 said:

I just wish there was an insurance company that could explain the rationale behind the seemingly random prices...

Edited by Dave200 on Wednesday 1st July 16:55

Well they are a broker so won't have access to that, at a guess...

[talksthetorque]

Oddly, I think a lot of your insurance issues might be with inexperience of RWD.
I know the z4 specialist (Chris Knott) want experience.

[Dave200]

talksthetorque said:

Oddly, I think a lot of your insurance issues might be with inexperience of RWD.

I somehow doubt that - I haven't yet been asked, in spite of fairly extensive experience...

[irocfan]

Dave200 said:

I thought this deserved a quick update by way of feedback. Work has meant that I haven't managed to make as much progress as I would have liked - so my efforts will be renewed!

Crossfire: Mega disappointment. I arrived wanting to love it, and realised it wasn't for me within 100m of the test drive. The driving position is just awful - pedals offset right, seats too high/flat, no wheel adjustment.

The result
Time to throw more money at the problem, and perhaps relax the size parameters a tiny bit.
I can't find anything that does what I want for £4k, so I'm going to go drive the following with a budget of £6-6.5k:


- SLK32 (although I think it's probably too small, the performance is hard to ignore)

Any thoughts/hints/tips from owners/drivers would be appreciated.

shame about the Crossfire but I'll agree it does polarise -I'd argue against the SLK then as it's just (effectively) a Crossfire in a different frock (unless your budget stretches to the newer model)

[Vaud]

Dave200 said:

talksthetorque said:

Oddly, I think a lot of your insurance issues might be with inexperience of RWD.

I somehow doubt that - I haven't yet been asked, in spite of fairly extensive experience...

Or their deduction that your wife, with limited driving experience, cannot have extensive driving experience with RWD, allowing them to risk profile based on that knowledge?

[Dave200]

Vaud said:

Dave200 said:

talksthetorque said:

Oddly, I think a lot of your insurance issues might be with inexperience of RWD.

I somehow doubt that - I haven't yet been asked, in spite of fairly extensive experience...

Or their deduction that your wife, with limited driving experience, cannot have extensive driving experience with RWD, allowing them to risk profile based on that knowledge?

Plausible, I suppose - just unlikely. If they were going to profile/cost based on RWD experience, surely they would ask rather than assume (as they did with me)? Insurers are not known for leaving things to chance.

I'll concede that insuring a non-Brit, Masters Student, in her early 20s, on a sporty car, with 18mths experience, in Central London is a fairly sizeable risk.
I'm just looking for an insurer that will take 8,000 miles a year in a £6k car seriously, in spite of the above...

[Vaud]

Dave200 said:

Plausible, I suppose - just unlikely. If they were going to profile/cost based on RWD experience, surely they would ask rather than assume (as they did with me)? Insurers are not known for leaving things to chance.

I'll concede that insuring a non-Brit, Masters Student, in her early 20s, on a sporty car, with 18mths experience, in Central London is a fairly sizeable risk.
I'm just looking for an insurer that will take 8,000 miles a year in a £6k car seriously, in spite of the above...

The value of the car is only a small factor. It is the damage caused to others (potentially millions at the worse end of the scale) that costs. Not the 6k payout for your car.

[Shaoxter]

Dave200 said:

Oddly, Footman James wouldn't even quote for me alone on fairly mundane 'sporty' cars, so perhaps their issue is more location-based.

Nope, I pay £270 for my E36 M3 with them
I live in zone 4, but even then it's still a band E postcode.

I've never paid more than £700 for insurance, you must be doing something wrong... try changing parameters like where you park the car at night, occupation (within reason), etc.

[dibblecorse]

Fast + London + Recently Qualified Driver is going to be the death knell on this all day long, for 12 months get something asthmatic if need be and let your wife learn to drive without the huge insurance pressures that an expensive to insure car brings with it, one minor bump and it will all unravel potentially, we ran a Mini Cooper Auto for 3 years after my wife past her test and through London was a doddle, in the lanes it was just point and squirt, handled brilliantly and we used it as our only car for 2 years going backwards and forwards to Cornwall from London regularly.

Your desire for fast is whats really screwing the figures, SLK's, GTi's etc will just wallet rape you on insurance.

Just my tuppence worth having spent a number of years in the motor insurance industry.

[braddo]

Are these insurance quotes just to add your partner as a named driver??

I am thinking the big factor must be her age, because when I added my OH as a named driver after she passed her test, the increase in premium was negigible. Other circumstances not much different to yours - powerful RWD car, parked on street, London postcode (zone 2) that insurers don't like etc. But OH age mid-30s.


Anyway, I think that another important consideration should be to avoid a car with a long bonnet, which makes it harder turning into cramped streets and seeing oncoming vehicles etc. In other words, a hatchback like the MkV Golf GTI (or is there a reasonably quick auto Polo?) rather than a Z4 or SLK.

[Dave200]

Shaoxter said:

I live in zone 4, but even then it's still a band E postcode.

I've never paid more than £700 for insurance, you must be doing something wrong... try changing parameters like where you park the car at night, occupation (within reason), etc.

Unless you're in Tottenham (or somewhere equally grim), there's a massive insurance risk differential between Z4 and Z1. In the A-F ranking our postcode comes under the "* Refer" category, which may as well be called "Lube up". We're moving soon (a smidge more centrally), which will be in a secure, gated community (with porter/security etc.). By way of experiment I tried the new postcode (also "Lube up") and car location, and it made almost no difference.

Occupation isn't really possible to wiggle for either of us, sadly.

Looking increasingly like we will be taking this one on the chin.

Edited by Dave200 on Friday 3rd July 10:31

[otolith]

The big gap between quotes for a Golf and a TT suggests that theft risk might be a significant factor? Thieves seem to prefer saloons and hatches, maybe because they're more practical for committing other crime in.

[Dave200]

braddo said:

Are these insurance quotes just to add your partner as a named driver??

I am thinking the big factor must be her age, because when I added my OH as a named driver after she passed her test, the increase in premium was negigible. Other circumstances not much different to yours - powerful RWD car, parked on street, London postcode (zone 2) that insurers don't like etc. But OH age mid-30s.


Anyway, I think that another important consideration should be to avoid a car with a long bonnet, which makes it harder turning into cramped streets and seeing oncoming vehicles etc. In other words, a hatchback like the MkV Golf GTI (or is there a reasonably quick auto Polo?) rather than a Z4 or SLK.

Yes - just as named driver.
There seems no rhyme nor reason about some of the quotes - with the Golf GTI significantly more expensive than a 3.2 TT in places. In spite of the bonnet length, the Z4 is actually a smaller car than a Golf overall - and that's what counts more in the sphere of manoeuvrability for me.

dibblecorse said:

Fast + London + Recently Qualified Driver is going to be the death knell on this all day long, for 12 months get something asthmatic if need be and let your wife learn to drive without the huge insurance pressures that an expensive to insure car brings with it, one minor bump and it will all unravel potentially, we ran a Mini Cooper Auto for 3 years after my wife past her test and through London was a doddle, in the lanes it was just point and squirt, handled brilliantly and we used it as our only car for 2 years going backwards and forwards to Cornwall from London regularly.

Your desire for fast is whats really screwing the figures, SLK's, GTi's etc will just wallet rape you on insurance.

Just my tuppence worth having spent a number of years in the motor insurance industry.

I hear exactly what you're saying.
If I could get a decent quote on a Cooper S automatic, I would give some serious thought to it for a year or so. It's just that I would regret not paying the extra cash every time I drove past something more interesting - hence the desire to try and minimise the additional outlay.

[braddo]

If the sports cars are cheaper to insure than the hatches, I would let that make the decision for me!

What about the 2.8 Z3? They might be cheaper than the Z4 and will still be a decent drive.

For extra luggage capacity when you need it, use one of these:

http://www.boot-bag.com/

I've used one on an Elise and on the back of my old Merc saloon too.

[DS197]

Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't it just be easier for you to buy your misses her own car? The fact that you want something fast, which you want to insure a relatively new driver will mean you'll be paying a fortune for insurance (as you've already found out). Especially in London (I also speak from experience). You say in your original post your OH has a E90? Wasn't it evident back when she bought it that it may not be the best car to buy living in London?