And if not, why not? I own an oldish van for personal use, and a motorbike for very occasional use (tbh). My other half owns her own car. I’d like to own a small cheap old car for longer distance journeys with me and my kids (which is the majority of my miles) to keep the miles off the van. It feels like me and my partner are paying for duplicated cover already, and adding another vehicle to the mix will add even more duplication. Could I not just simplify the whole thing and insure the lot as a small fleet? Does anyone offer this? and if not, why not.

In fact; I think that we should insure ourselves personally, as drivers, rather than per vehicle, with maybe a small surcharge for the ‘fire and theft’ aspect per additional vehicle, which must be a small component of the overall risk. I’m going to do the same mileage along the same roads with the same attitude to risk and other drivers no matter which of the (4 wheeled) vehicles I drive doing those miles. I’m massively more careful on the bike, but it does so few miles that it wouldn’t make a massive difference either.

Bet that’s not offered by insurance companies either.

Was thinking about this the other day as then I would keep my big car for holidays and get a smaller car for commuting.

The problem is it would encourage multiple car owners and it seems that a high proportion of the population dont have sufficient parking places and inconveniently park on the road, which as well as causing parking problems probably adds to a lot of extra pollution. For people with plenty of parking space it would be brilliant though.

Exactly. I wouldn’t buy it if I couldn’t park it; and the other costs, servicing, tyres, MOTs etc would deter me from my slightly odd ‘if I were a millionaire’ leanings of having 27 or more old cool cars scattered around the manor, just in case. But insurance is annoying. why should I pay double for what clearly isn’t double the risk?

We do have a multi-car policy which is cheaper than individual but it’s still not the same.

The problem is how you insure certain cars which are a higher risk of accident or higher repair costs.

The current insurance cost is based on things including the driver, location, car cost to repair and car type (ie likelyhood of being driven like a knob)

I wouldnt mind if they based in the insurance on your “worst” car and then all other cars you had were automatically covered after a bi extra for the fire and theft for each car.

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;”>. I wouldn’t buy it if I couldn’t park it;</span>

Unfortunately most people are selfish idiots these days it seems so they would buy lots of cars and leave them in really inconsiderate places. Spoiling it for those of us who have acres of land and barns to stash cars in 😉

I’ve thought along similar lines. It may need to be a product that exists in the future though. I’ve read a number of articles pushing the idea of community/shared vehicles that anyone can use …. a bit like boris bikes in London type thing.

So what if you had a driving license, but didn’t own a car but wanted to drive a community car …. how could you get insured ? That sort of setup lends itself to personal driving insurance rather than per vehicle insurance.

I have 3 cars on one policy, all modified, all modifications declared, one is very high performance on limited mileage policy, one is daily drive fiesta van and one is work in progress.
My broker is a company called pace ward, cost is very reasonable.

You should be able to add a vehicle to a policy in the same way as you can add a driver; ie; a little bit of admin and a slight policy adjustment up (or down, hahaha) depending on the altered risk. I don’t think that one person owning two old cars makes for a significantly higher (in fact possibly lower if the driver chooses to drive the cheaper slower car more) risk than one person owning one car of the value of the two.

Ooh, that is interesting slartybartfast. How did you come across that? Sounds exactly the sort of thing I need (except for the high performance bit I suppose)

Edit; I am VERY much NOT the target consumer for that insurer, sadly.

Multi Vehicle policies are aimed at Mid/High Net Worth families who own a mix of vehicles with the lead vehicle being valued around or over the £70,000 mark.

Try Avia, has to all be done on line, prob won’t include Bike but that on limited mileage can be pretty inexpensive. We have similar mix and all done by them.

Maybe something like https://www.quoterack.co.uk/Mini-Fleet-Insurance.aspx

This used to exist in the motorcycle world at least when I first started riding in the 1990’s. It was called a rider policy so the rider was insured and was based on CC’s so any bike up to 600 or 750 etc, it got more expensive as you went up the engine sizes. It also meant you could buy a new bike and not have to worry about informing your insurance company.

My parents have a joint home and car multiple policy. Includes 4 cars all parked considerately, two with agreed values. Anything is possible with insurance it’s just finding a broker and insurance company who gas! What they like is just having one renewal to deal with, much less hassle once set up, less junk paperwork and one bill.
Possible to set up s trade policy? We have one at work, we can drive anything!

+1 for aviva i found it quite tricky to get our van included in a multicar policy for me and the wife.

I found looking for specific second car insurance to be cheaper.

The family car is 250 quid -its also the least valuable,the safest , the least powerful and the smallest….

The landrover is 150 quid on a classic agreed value limited miles policy Inc break down cover.- as a primary car it was more than 500 on agreed value

The camper is 180 quid as a second car. As a primary(or when I was quoted as no a second car) i was quoted more than 1000 it’s 7.2m long so statistically this type of vehicle suffers from alot of shuts where people are not used to driving such a big vehicle so I was surprised at cost to insure.

-not a humble brag at all sounds very extravagant but the three of them together cost less to buy than your middle of the range new Octavia (although alot of my blood and sweat are in the landy and the camper)

One big thing that brought all the prices down was when I told them I had a dash cam perminantly wired in all of them.

Quote Trail_rat

“<span style=”background-color: #eeeeee; color: #444444;”>One big thing that brought all the prices down was when I told them I had a dash cam perminantly wired in all of them.”</span>

Remind me never to drive in front of you. Looking on YouTube it seems like everyone with a dash cam gets involved in a crash or a near miss. 🙂

Well there is a little bit of truth in that because those that don’t have em can’t upload footage 😉

Nearly lost the camper on its first trip due to a maniac cutting a blind corner( less than a mile from home) at speed and being inches from hiting us head on after a 4 wheel lock up slide towards us…..the footage from that was quite damning when sent to the 5-0 and they had a word in his ear.