Cheapest Insurance

[skygod]

What is the cheapest car to insure, are there loopholes where if you buy certain cars its ridiculously cheap? Like cars with certain fuel emissions or classic cars etc. Or is all that myths. I'm 19 and want to find the cheapest car possible to insure.

[Toureman]

All cars are classed into insurance groups ranging from 1-to I think 20, 1 being the cheapest to insure.

Read car reviews they should state what group they are in.

The cheaper and slower the car is the less the insurance will be.

[Toureman]

Look at this!

http://www.parkers.co.uk/choosing/insurance/index.aspx

[Buenchico]

(Posted in 2 parts, 'cos AB's being awkward tonight!):

For a more detailed version of the search facility which Toureman has provided, see here:
http://www.abi.org.uk/carinsurance/search.asp

For a car to fall into a low insurance group, the following requirements normally apply:
1. The car should be cheap to buy (Think Kia, Proton, etc.)
2. The car should be cheap to repair (Think Ford)
3. The car should have a small engine.
4. The car should be unattractive to 'boy-racers' or 'joy riders' (Kia, Proton, again).
5. Ideally, the car should have good security. (Unfortunately, the best security is usually found on cars which don't meet the previous four requirements!).

Without doing any checking, if I was looking for a car with a low insurance group. I'd probably be looking for something like a Ford Fiesta (with the smallest engine available for the year of production) or, as I've indicated a less popular make such as Kia or Proton. (I drive a Proton and pay only �140p.a. for my insurance but I'm much older than you with maximum no-claims bonus).

[Buenchico]

Although you can use the sites suggested by Toureman and myself to check out cars one-by-one, I'd really suggest investing a few pounds on the latest edition of Parker's Car Price Guide (available from most newsagents). This gives the insurance group for all cars listed and is far quicker to use than either of the websites. (I'm often amazed at the number of people who won't pay a few pounds for a publication which could save them hundreds, or even thousands, of pounds on the price of buying a car and insuring it!)

Chris

(PS: You mentioned classic cars in your post. While it's true that owners of classic cars can sometimes get incredibly low insurance quotes, this is usually on the basis that the classic car is a 'second car' and it will only be driven no more than, say, 3000 miles per year. It's unlikely that buying a 'classic' would be of any use to you).

[=rizla=]

Insurance groups is only part of the way ins. companys look at prices, they also look at how many of that car crashed/claimed in the last few years, so something like a corsa thats commonly driven by younger drivers who statisticaly crash more might be dearer than say a similar cost/performance/isu group kia that is probably driven more by older drivers who tend to crash/claim less.

[erimus1]

Its all about money and risk assessment. Things that you have to take into consideration are the type of car it is - specifically, is it powerful, expensive, expensive to fix etc.

There are a few ways that you can actually beat the system though (quite legally). If you want to but a supercar, you are always going to pay through the nose. However, if ou want a fash smart car, try doing it yourself (and no, i'm not talikng about one of those crappy boy racer, body kitted efforts or a pimp mobile!). I've don this a few times - fist time I did it was quite a few years ago when I had a Renault 5 Turbo that was a group 14 insurance. As a 21 year old lad, I was paying over a �1100 (1996). I did a Prima racing conversion on it, spending about �3000 on it. When renewing my insurance, it was considered a specialist quote (which I thought would push it through the roof). In actual fact it more than halved it! - When I asked, apparently the logic behind it is that if you spend so much money on a car, you are going to look after it. - Done this on quite a few cars since with great success. Oh, and its not going to work if you just put a few go-faster parts on it - you have to go the whole hog!