17 year old sons first shite need insuring, help...

[capsuleboy]

We bought a lovely 205 a while back for youngest sprog and now it needs cover, as his test is in a couple of weeks.

Any advice please...

[wuvvum]

Sell the 205 on here and get him insured on the Ami - it'll be cheaper, 602cc engine innit.

[vulgalour]

I ended up with Admiral for my first policy four years ago and I'm back with Admiral again now.  Young driver and modified cars friendly, usually.  17, male and hatchback will unfortunately mean a premium of several thousand however you go about it.  The norm seems to be about £3k for even the most basic cover on the most basic car.

[Ghosty]

I'm 20 and I'm still getting £2-3k quotes, hence just assisting on things with the A4 for now. Don't need a car for the forseeable anyway (5 months and I'm moving 3 miles from uni), just killing time to lower premiums really.

Had my license since Nov '13 too.

[Doctormop]

Apparently Tesco insurance are quite young driver friendly, a mate of mine got his recently qualified to drive step child insured for much less than average.

Might be worth looking into.

[Matt]

Move to the countryside, it's the only solution for 'cheap' quotes for new drivers. Realistically shop around like a madman and try every legitimate permutation of every option they gave you. Even daft things like keeping the car on the driveway vs in a garage can have different prices.

 

The £2-3k quotes puzzle me as I paid under £750 for my first policy at 18 having only held my license for ten months. Five years later I'm sure I could get insurance for under £300 if I shopped around.

[vulgalour]

Good things:

rural postcode

low annual mileage, usually 4000-6000 miles

social-domestic use only (this usual infers using the car outside of peak times too)

parked off the road on a driveway but not in a garage

alarm, aftermarket or factory

home owner

 

Bad things:

under 25 years old

less than 3 years NCB/driving experience

modifications

high annual mileage, usually 8,000 miles plus

parked on the street

living in a poor urban area - seriously, the wealthier the area I've lived in the better my policy has been and vice versa

unemployed, sometimes this translates as uninsurable

 

Fully comprehensive is probably pointless on the 205 and third party only (not many offer that now) is generally very expensive.  Third party fire and theft is usually the best balance for cost and cover and usually allows you to build NCB.  Keeping a car for 12 months will normally offer a discount on your policy, 10% was what I was told by my last insurer (Adrian Flux, who are a bit useless but very cheap, hope you never have to claim with them) and this has been confirmed by other insurers.  Don't claim for anything at all if it can be avoided, especially within the first three years, because it really ramps the costs up.  Sometimes having a more experienced named driver on the policy can help.  Weirdly, Chompy and I have both found that a female named driver with a provisional license can offer a more significant discount than a male driver with a full license and plenty of experience/NCB and we have no idea why this is.

 

Unfortunately there is going to be no cheap way of getting that first policy.  He won't be eligible for classic insurance as the vast majority want you to be over 21 and have three years driving experience now and some might regard the 205 as being too new, not only that he won't get the NCB build up to reduce costs on future policies either.  Essentially if you are a young driver these days and want affordable insurance you are completely screwed.

[fordperv]

Try getting quotes with you and the mrs as a named driver see if that brings the quotes down, a lot of the time having a "mature experienced driver" does

 

Avoid the black box if possible

[New POD]

I paid £2K to ADD a 17 year girl to the insurance on my wife's shopping car* as a named driver.

 

 

*51 reg BiNi Cooper (NOT S)

[Sloth in a bowl]

Postcode can be a killer, my insurance quote goes up about 3 times as soon as I put my postcode in as I live 200 yards from one of Birmingham's accident blackspots.

[fairkens]

Very little difference between TPFT and fully comp these days - in the Junkman era most of the cost of a claim was repairing the car, so significant discounts to be had for TPFT. In the modern timez most of the cost of a claim is compensation, so whether they have to fix your car as well is neither here nor there.

 

I loath the concept, but try one of the black box telematics policies, they seem to be much cheaper even after forking out for the box, don't know how 205 friendly they are.

 

Check out slightly odd cars too, when I passed my test Saab 900 turbos were half the price of the nova I had my eye on

[mrbenn]

Seems that 205s are often quite expensive to insure irrespective of age.

 

Insurance companies mist think anyone wanting to drive one is a cowboy hat wearing stunt double that goes around licking 9 volt batteries.

[Junkman]

In the Junkman era 17 year olds were insured on mama's Rennafor.

So there's just another thing that used to be better. Just sayin', like.

I'd try the same today.

[SiC]

A couple of things that I found helped:

- Type of car. Not always what you imagine. Smaller cars + small engines are often driven by young people and crashed more. This makes small cars, statistically, more likely to be involved in an accident and thus cost more to insure.

- Having parents on the insurance. This made a big difference to mine. In the order of 1k or more.

- Classic car insurance. Depending on the policy, it may not be possible to drive to work. However this type of policy can be a very cost effective way. I guess a 205 is now classic car territory.

 

Good luck!

[billyboy406v6]

Having held a provisional licence for a several years is frowned upon as well ?

[Jim Bell]

The Prostitute of Advanced Mentalists test thing used to bring it down a fair bit. Dunno if it still does.

[LessThanEqual]

I'm 19, been driving since early September, and this is what I did to get a quote of £813 for the year on my 1.6 Polo.

I am the main driver on the policy, mum and step dad are both named drivers with no recent claims and lots of NCB.

Social, domestic, and pleasure coverage. 4,000 miles a year. Maximised my excess, it's in the region of £1300 total.

Fully comp cover (third party was something like £10 cheaper so why not). No added frills like courtesy car, European cover etc.

Oh, and I live 30 miles from the closest city. I think that's about it.

[LessThanEqual]

Forgot to mention that insurance is REALLY bad when you're 17. The cheapest quote I had then was around £1400.

[rantingYoof]

When I was 18 it was cheaper insuring my Rover 214SEi with 104hp than it was for my friend insuring a 75hp 1.4 8v Polo.

 

Back then you were definitely "rewarded" for driving a car that no other 18/19/20yr old would ever own. The insurance on my Saab 9000 was a mere £750 a year, fully comprehensive, on a 10 month accelerator NCB scheme as well. I was 19 with 1yr NCB.

 

It helped passing my test relatively early and building up NCB - when I was 21 or so I was rolling around in a 200hp RWD Omega which was costing me the same to insure as a mate with a Megane diesel.

 

This doesn't work now. My sister began driving at 23yrs old and when I was doing some preliminary research for her, I found that all the weird/quirky motors that once upon a time would have been cheaper to insure because no other 23yr old would think to choose it, now cost hilarious amounts for no reason whatsoever (i.e £2900 to insure a 1.6 Skoda Octavia, 7k per year, with a spybox).

 

It's nice now to be under 30 and be insuring a car with luxury and reasonable grunt for well under £300 .

 

 

 

I would recommend Tescos as an insurer for young drivers. I was with them for four years and they were consistently the most competitive.

[djimbob]

Been thru this with grown up daughter - basically go to Money saving expert website, and take their advice on how to cover all the insurance companies - in brief use three comparison websites they tell you, and several independent insurance companies like Aviva and direct line.

 

like I said to her after she passed the test, we now buy the car which is cheapest to insure because I'm paying for it, and you're paying the insurance, so suck it up, you will be in a gimmer's car most likely as they are the lowest risk to be ragged and stolen etc.

 

cheapie and unfashionable such as automatic Almera, Clio, Daewoo's, etc, forget anything young persons actually like the concept of, you will need a second mortgage to pay for the bloody insurance

 

Can't emphasise how important it is to do loads of quotes, spend at least a full day, you will save thousands, literally - we had policies sub eight hundred quid to start with in inner city Leeds, on her clio 1.4 rt auto, which we bought for about tree fiddy squids off an old couple advertised in the local Post Office, and never paid more since (she was 18, now 27 years old), by sticking to this formula - now she drives a 2008 Pug 207 1. something or other, i forget, diesel sport.

 

Good luck with the search, you should be fine with patience

[HH-R]

Good point about the IAM above. I'd recommend it as a matter of course... the best money I ever spent. I reckon it's the reason why I've not boshed into anything *touches wood*. I enjoyed doing it too, my instructor was very passionate about driving and tough at times but very good!

[Pillock]

Remember how insurance works. They have a big list of all the payouts they've ever made, and they work out risks based on how often criteria appear in their list. Naturally, 17 year olds who are full of spunk crop up more often than 45 year olds. A photocopier salesman, under pressure to get his next bonus, will be a higher risk than a archaeology lecturer. And yes, an undersirable car like a Citroen BX (to a 17 year old, not winners like us) will appear in their list less than a Clio or Fiesta.

 

Yeah, there's other stuff like how much it costs to repair, how easy it is to steal and stuff - but primarily, they're in the business of making sure they earn more money than you're likely to cost them.

 

So, don't be afraid to play around with stuff. Not fraudulently, that's just daft - but there's a massive swing in some of the weightings they use. As an example, I work as a trainer - I have a dozen people in a room, and I teach them stuff relating to the company we work for. I once insured a Ford Focus for £600 a year, which I thought was a bit much, but had to be done. I was a "Trainer" on their list of occupations, we did it over the phone. The year after, I renewed with the same company by taking out a new customer policy on their website, £240 for the year. What? Surely one year NCB doesn't make that much difference. The only other change I'd made was putting myself down as "Training consultant" - still accurate, I'd argue that was my job in court, but sure enough when I went back and fiddled with the quote changing it to "Trainer" bumped it up more than double. Apparently, to them "trainer" means "personal trainer, pumped full of sterioids" sort of trainer, so on their list of risks they must have a load of personal trainers who have been having accidents.

 

Naturally, get it garaged if you can. Might work out cheaper to build a crappy garage if you only have a driveway. 

Pass Plus still knocks down the policy, as does limited mileage.

Nothing wrong with black boxes, the only people who really don't like them are kids who want to go fast. Well, tough. You can still get a perfect black box score at 70mph on a motorway which is plenty fast enough when the week before you were panicking in case the examiner asked you to do a hill start. 

[rantingYoof]

One thing I've always thought is if you gave young drivers cars that do not encourage them to drive fast, but make them appreciate teh waft4ge, it might prevent a lot of the Darwin-award winners who find trees in the country-side at around 85-90mph.

 

My Saab 9000 was glacially slow, but when I test drove it - at 19, remember - I was gobsmacked at how completely silent it was all the way up to 70mph. It was a fucking barge, too, and couldn't be thrown around at all.

 

So I wafted places at 60-65mph, relaxed, comfortable, rather than zipping and zapping. People gave me a fuckload of room because it was a big, black Swedish car with a couple of bodywork dings (including a deep scratch above a wheel-arch that refused to rust during one of the harshest winters I can remember).

 

I would be interested to see what a 17/18yr old would get as a quote on a 2.0 16v Saab 9-3 or 9000 (naturally aspirated, of course), compared to the standard smallish hatchback.

[panhard65]

When we insured my girlfriends lad at 17 he had a Fiat cinquecento and it was cheap enough to insure as a learner, about 20 quid a month I think. The problem arose when he passed his test. To insure the cinq would of been about 2k, but we found that if he had a more modern car that could have one of these black box things fitted it brought the premium down to a realistic £900 It worked out cheaper buying a Citroen C2 and insuring it than trying to get insurance on the cinq. He has been driving a year and most of that time the box hasn't even been working as you can go on line and it should tell you the usage. After 6 months it said he had done about 100 miles so it had no idea. At the renewal he has been able to swap insurance and no black box and still at around £800. It is that first year of driving that is the killer get him something modern and cheap for the first year then let him move onto the interesting stuff later. I know our lad wanted a midget as his first car but a year later and he now wants an Audi TT (I told him he can have a Banham and be happy)

[Lacquer Peel]

Good point about the IAM above. I'd recommend it as a matter of course... the best money I ever spent. I reckon it's the reason why I've not boshed into anything *touches wood*. I enjoyed doing it too, my instructor was very passionate about driving and tough at times but very good!

 

No doubt it's good for some, but I think it instils some "best driver evar" arrogance in others.

I was a passenger with an IAM'er who kept going on about how he could read the road but stabbed the brakes at every corner, accelerated harshly and navigated roundabouts like they were a 50p piece.

[Pillock]

Oh yeah, I could go on a baking workshop and I'd still make cakes like rocks. Attending doesn't make you good, a good teacher makes you good. I suspect they pass most people just so they keep people recommending it and the cash coming in.

[Aston Martin]

I'm not saying fiddle the insurance...

[tommotech]

I know you're now stuck with the 205 but I had best results with a Clio van which is a 1.9d. We are not particularly rural but nonetheless have a 'good' postcode. A year as a learner fully comp (17 yo) was £750 which then went up to £1200 as a newly qualified driver, with no black box. Both me and Mrs T are also on the policy.

Being a van it has the bonus of only 1 other seat, small comfort but some peace of mind for Mrs T.

I priced up a Peugeot 207 1.4s now that he is nearly 19 and ready for something better* and that pans out at £700 without a box, cheaper with by 80 to 130 quid.

 

I would urge you to use money supermarket and compare the market and play around with different parameters in order to optimise your quote. Don't be fraudulent obviously, this will just leave you as uninsurable in the future.

 

I was disappointed with NFU, they declined to quote, so I will be declining to renew my insurances with them next month.

[fairkens]

NFU aren't a mainstream insurer, they won't have appetite for stuff like that.

 

They are a good insurer though, be careful who you move to

[HH-R]

No doubt it's good for some, but I think it instils some "best driver evar" arrogance in others.

I was a passenger with an IAM'er who kept going on about how he could read the road but stabbed the brakes at every corner, accelerated harshly and navigated roundabouts like they were a 50p piece.

 

Yep! I know someone who has done it whose driving is terrifying at worst, mechanically unsympathetic at best.