Stupid Q time-How to buy a car

[TheEnd]

Since all of this continuous insurance stuff, the changes to tax coming in soon, what's the smartest way to buy a car?

Situation- so I've got a car, Car A, tax, tested and insured with max no claims. I'm thinking of changing it, so it looks like I'm going to have to buy the replacement, Car B which should have tax and MOT, but for insurance, I'm probably going to have to start a new policy with no NCB on it at all as that's all be used on the current car.

Is it possible to add the NCB discount in, say, a month, when the current car gets sold?
Is it better to transfer the policy from A to B with NCB? This will then mean no continuous insurance, and technically it'll have to be SORNed too, so that's going to make people test driving it awkward.

Maybe transfer policy, start a new short term policy for a month rolling on car A until it sells? It won't have the NCB, but at least it's not going to be a massive yearly lump sum, which will then be cancelled mid term with a good chance of huge penalties.

What's the smart way to do this?

To put things in perspective, current car is a 540i so grp 19 in the old Ins Co ratings, and the replacement is likely to be an 8 series BMW, so 19 or 20, which means insurance without NCB is going to be fairly pricey so it's going to be important to try and keep costs down as I can see £500+ getting wasted sorting out insurance just to get a car sold.

[Gruber]

You'd have to compare the costs of the various options, but you could stick the 8er on a limited miles classic policy until you've sold the 540.

Classic policies don't use NCB anyway. And you can cancel the policy in due course.

[TooMany2cvs]

Talk to your existing insurer. They may well allow you to add the second car to the policy short-term.