Were looking for a new car, which will also be my first car but don't want a puny 1.2 like most of the young drivers. As a kayaker and biker I'll have boats or bikes on the roof with people inside. Ive even considered a small van (even if they do only have 2 seats!)
My bro has a 1.6 rover 25 (insuranse group 8!) and pays just over £900 a year insurance (3rd party fire nd theft)
Ive looked at everything in lower insurance groups but can't find insurance lower than £900. The car will be my mums who has full no claims but no luck with insurance quotes.
Were only looking to spend 1k or less on the car.
Anyone reccommend a car to suit or cheap insurance company??
dont touch vans - insurance is sky rocket on them ....
if your 17 you wont find insurance for less than 900 a year ... id expect it to be more like 1500 for anything of a decent size !
Skoda Felicia Kombi (Estate). Horrible car, horrible interior, horrible to drive but cheap and probably not too bad to insure and reasonably spacious.
Vectra estate, maybe? There were millions of these around sub-£1000 when I was shopping and if you pay attention to engine choice it should be reasonable to run and insure, as these things go. You'd have to accept some compromises on condition though from the ones I saw, this is the main reason I didn't get one, I went and saw about 4 and none of them were awful but I got sick of spending so much time shopping. Other contenders were Honda Aerodecks and older Volvos. You're going to get stiffed on insurance, that's a fact but you can help yourself by getting something slow, safe and incredibly undesirable.
I'm kind of assuming an estate here, but if you're using the roof to carry stuff it wouldn't have to be. Just remember to cost for roof mounts too!
oh no i'd NEVER go for a felicia. we used to have one years ago and it was horrid. ive had a quote of £1100 for a van on comprehensive but I want 3rd party f+f.
decent size doenst need to be huge, just big enough to carry stuff around.
What van was that and why in gods name would you want 3 fandt if comp is cheaper - it usually is
How are you getting these quotes, is the insurance in your name or your mother's?
If it's in your name, put your mum or someone with plenty of experience as a named driver. Should drop the price a bit. (I added my dad as a named driver and saved nearly £100)
Like trail_rat said, comp was cheaper for me than 3rd party f+f
What did you do to get a quote of £1100!? I have given up looking at cars/insurance because of the ridiculous quotes. £3000 on an old 1.1 mini clubman is one that comes to mind! Or a Series 3 LWB Land Rover for £5000. These were both limited (7000) miles, with my Dad as a named driver, used for leisure only, TPFT - fully comp maybe cheaper for some but it certainly isn't for a 17 y.o. yobbo! At the moment I am folding my bike in the back of a Panda which isn't ideal but for the money Im more than happy to unbolt my wheels!
Had a 1.3 ford escort when i was your age, was very cheap and would fit loads of stuff with careful planning, todays equivalent would be a ford focus 1.4 estate?! that'd be my choice..
Or just do a search on autotrader or similar for estate and see what comes up??
How about something dull like a Xsara turbo diesel estate? dont buy a non turbo though as ours is gutless with the bike rack on
hmm. my peugeot expert was marginally cheaper to insure than the seat leon it replaced. similar engine sizes. van was newer and worth more. direct line. i'd previously insured using confused.com but all the quotes i got through their van service were 100 quid more than DL at best.
the van was a citroen berlingo 1.9D.
ive looked at escort estates in the 1.8TD version but insurance was over £1200.
the focus esttes are expensive to buy as they're a wanted car.
i didnt know they did a turbo diesel estate xsara, only non turbo, will look into them thanks.
Yup, my Focus costs buttons to insure but it wasn't cheap to buy, very pleased with it mind but you pay more for what you get than you do with some of the alternatives,equivalent V40s were about 20% less frinstance (but more expensive to insure). But far less good as haulers.
how about a ford Focus 1.4 or a Mondeo 1.6 ?
What about a classic car, would a classic policy be any cheaper...?
Keep in mind that if your mum isn't the main driver on a policy under her name then that's fronting - which is a hot topic for insurance companies now so you could get stung if you need to claim.
Oggles's suggestions are a good idea though.
Anything that young people don't drive really - play the statistics game. So nothing ford or Vauxhall. Something uncommon will most likely have less claims stats attached so will be cheaper (astras probably get crashed by youngsters every minute if every day but daewoo lacertti probably don't ergo the daewoo will be cheaper.
Astra estate might be a good bet, I've got an awfuly slow 1.6 petrol that insurance was cheap on. The back seats fold flat so the boot space is simmilar to the astra van easily big enough to fit me in and I'm 6'5". I use it to haul my Mx bike on a rack and fill the boot with all my kit full size tool box etc or chuck my bike in the back which easily slots in with the seats down. I've fitted three bikes, tool box, bike stand, track pump ,hold all etc in the back whilst camping at Mayhem didn't drive it like that though as bikes were just thrown in to keep the locked up at night. I bought it solely because I wanted something to be able to get to mtb, road and mx races and it fits the bill quite well a van would be better but too expensive on insurance like mentioned above. I usually drive about 1-3hrs to get to races and its quite comfortable on motorways it just takes a long time to get up to speed and touch wood it's been reliable so far despite costing in the region of 1k and having a hard life with me driving it! Try tiger.co.uk for quotes.
Iain
i've had a mondeo diesel estate (99) since I was 23. Highest insurance I've paid was well under £500. Should be able to pick up a that-shape model for around £500 now, mine's probably worth most at weigh-in. Will keep going forever, but isn't very modern (engine wise)
If you live in an urban area then car insurance for a new, young, male driver will be extremely high whatever the car.
Even if your own car is almost worthless, the potential for causing damage to others is very high.
This is the reason why very few 17 year olds drive around in old 3 litre BMWs and tend to be seen in low-powered small cars.
I was going to suggest a Land Rover, but after the mention of £5000 above, maybe that's not a good idea.
Classic car insurance can be cheap, but some of them insist on you having a main use vehicle as well to get the cheap rate on the classic car.
Nissan Almera estate, dull but reliable and big enough.
Volvo V40.
You can get a mint example with 100,000 on the clock for under £2000, they are bomb proof, petrols go to 150,000 and the diesels 250000+, you can get two bikes in the back each with one wheel still on and the insurance is as cheap as it gets at that level.
t
Good luck, at 23 I still couldn't get anything insured under £800, so bought an MG midget, roof's are overated anyway 🙂
Classic insurance insn't an option untill your 21, and unless you can convince them that a '89 sierra estate is a classic you'll be looking at anglia's and travelers etc for classic estates, which barely have more space than a modern fiesta/astra. Classic car insurance companies are getting wise to the idea that kids can buy a banger and insure cheep as a 'classic'. When I got mine it felt more like applying for a job at an interview than applying for car insurance!
Also, ignore moneysupermarket, comparethemarket, gocompare.com, etc, go to a broker (there migth be a few on your high street) and get them to search for quotes, because it saved me about £150 which was 25% of my bill. The websites just enter your details into every other online insurance website and sumarise the results for you, a broker might actualy know a cheeper place, or have negotiated discounts with verious companies.
when did you get that quote on a 1.9d ? was it an actual van or the estate car -
the vans are astronomical but the estate car is cheap to insure ! try a 1.6HDI berlingo estate CAR (not the van derivitive) - they were about 1/8th of the price for me. 250 fully comp for me on an hdi berlingo car vs 450 3rd party on the van - 1000 on fully comp ! 24 with 3 years NCB !
Current quotes are STILL 450-500 at 25 with 4 years NCB ! glad i dont need to renew till may next year - i was just curious !
Have you considdered car hire?
When I looked into it, the cost of insurance+tax+mot+breakdowns(+service if you cant DIY it) meant it was cheeper to hire a car almost every weekend for a year than it was to buy and run one. But thats me at 23, might be different at 17.
Even now at 24 with a very good income, probaly less than 15% of my peer group at work have cars, and thats excluding the ones who live in london who don't have a car because it would be a waste of time. No one can justify the premiums (say £800) depreciation (say £1k on a £5k stra) and garage bills (£200 expected + £???? if it breaks down), and despite the wingeing, trains are still about as expensive as petrol so for traveling alone/infrequently make sense.
I've just resigned myself to not bothering with a real car untill I'm in my late 20's and/or commuting by bike is no longer an option.
you cannot hire a car realistically for a 17yr old ...
i tried. most are 21 minimum - those that do allow are silly money !
Come to think of it though, in 25 years of driving Land Rovers, I've never had a random stop and document check.
Get a Land Rover and don't bother with the insurance.
As long as you can avoid crashing, and smear some mud on the number plates so the ANPR cameras don't spot you, you should get away with it.
Even if you get caught the fine will probably be less than the insurance would have cost.
goodpoint graham ...
my granda ran an old S plate(as in **** XES format) landy for YEARS - up till about 98/98
used to get stopped ALL the time - it smoked and it was rusty but ALWAYS passed its mot - nothing dodgy going on either.
The only thing they ever picked him up on was an "unsecure" load in his trailer - it was tied down but the lawnmower could roll about 3 inches forwards and back ....
Just run loads and loads of insurance price checker searches on lots of different models of car. There's no rhyme or reason to car insurance premiums - insurance groups are certainly a poor predictor.
My experience is that if it's the sort of car people your age like, and are likely to buy with someone else's money, then the insurance is often pricey. Something offbeat is generally cheaper to insure.
The only problem is that girls assume you've borrowed your Dad's car if you end up in a Mondeo.
We got our [fresh past her test] 18 yr old daughter insured for £750 with this lot
Bit different to other insurance but suits her needs
Out of interest, why not a small car? Ok so the wheels have to come off but you can still fit 2 blokes and 2 bikes inside a small car, we did 4+4 in a 206!
The problem is anythign that isn't 'gutless' is expensive as theres no differece in the isurers eyes between you the extream sports dude who takes life in own hands, the kid down the road who does nothing more dangerous than chess, and the boy racer on the next street. And as a result you all pay the average premium, which is very high.
The problem is your likely to crash, and with a bigger car you'll do even more damage.