CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by CHR15E » Fri Apr 28, 2017 7:05 am

Yeah, she adds me which usually saves about £200 as she's only been driving 3 years. The first year it saved about £500.

Flip side is mine goes up with her being on it so swings and roundabouts.
Chris
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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by mercedade » Fri Apr 28, 2017 8:54 am

scoobyh123 wrote: As an aside, what i've never really got is how insurers can justify different premiums for different vehicles driven by the same person. Granted repair costs come into it somewhat but i'm no more likely to have an accident in one vehicle or another so why do i have to pay significantly more for one vehicle when i drive it no more than another?
(my emphasis added)

Trouble is, you are much more likely to have an accident in one car than another - their decades of ridiculously detailed information proves that. It's not just about power, it's about value (not just repair/replacement costs), age etc.

Case in point - I've just bought a Leon Cupra. It was cheap (like, quite a bit sub £1k) and is ridiculously fast. Probably the fastest car I've ever owned (inc. 4.0 Sovereign and the mk1 827) and the insurance reflects that. According to their tables, a 35 year old man immediately turns into a raving lunatic when behind the wheel of the Cupra and will inevitably end up in a hedge - and to an extent, I can see their point! A cheap, powerful car with a plentiful supply of spares? I certainly feel less inclined to take it steady - I care about it less, I psychologically value the car less, so their opinion is that I'm ever so slightly more likely to crash it. All the factors add up.

Don't get me wrong - insurance premiums still p** me off! :x
Adrian
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Gone...1998 Rover Mk2 820 Vitesse Hatchback (green)
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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by scoobyh123 » Fri Apr 28, 2017 10:42 am

I get what you're saying Adrian but a couple of years back taking my Sterling to the show at Peterborough a Leon Cupra tried burning me off after cutting me up.
I'm going to plead the 5th Amendment on the speeds i hit but to say he didn't stand a chance is putting it mildly. Don't get me wrong, it was a quick car but no match for my 827, even on the twisty bits round roundabouts and similar. Then again several people have said my Sterling is quicker than an 827 has a right to be and in fairness, it's the quickest one i've ever known.

Back to the insurance, it's a necessary evil and i suppose there is something in the research etc on the part of insurance companies but if you were to put a stereotypical Micra 1.0 driving librarian into a Leon Cupra, he (or she) isn't going to turn into a lead-footed tarmac terrorist in a matter of moments.
Talking of Seats though, the best-kept secret for many years were the original (in this country) Ibiza and Malaga models with the 1.2 and 1.5 System Porsche engines. Get a good one and they went like stink and drank very little. Get a bad one and they were gutless and lucky to return 18mpg on a run.
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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by mercedade » Fri Apr 28, 2017 11:14 am

scoobyh123 wrote: it was a quick car but no match for my 827...
Having become depressingly well-acquainted with the usual suspects as I've mined the forums for info, my guess would be that it was a 1.8 Leon dressed up in knock-off Cupra R bits! Put it this way, I've removed the lowering springs from mine and there won't be a shortage of buyers from VAG fans. :roll:

The Cupra is seriously quick. On paper, my Vitesse is marginally quicker (and running uprated boost, I'd expect it) but I guess the extra years (albeit only 3 years) have taken their toll on the Rover. It's the management of the power that gets me - it can put it all down, whereas 800s can't make use of it all. There's also something about the Seat feeling quicker - probably down to the size of it. My 827 was ludicrously quick (nothing to do with me, I should add; all the mods were done before my ownership and not all of them welcome - my emissions were an annual ball-ache), but it's a different kind of power. Smoother but less frantic.

In any case, I won't be keeping the Cupra. It's a short-term toy+shift it on job. I'm putting it back to standard, putting an extra 12 months MOT on it, and selling it on. It's too low for my driveway and crucially, I'm using it to fund the ZT 190+ I'm looking for...
scoobyh123 wrote: if you were to put a stereotypical Micra 1.0 driving librarian into a Leon Cupra, he (or she) isn't going to turn into a lead-footed tarmac terrorist in a matter of moments
It's all in the incrementals though - she might be just ever so slightly more enthusiastic off the lights, having decided to race that 'golf club' looking Rover next to her...
Adrian
1998 Rover Mk2 820 Vitesse Hatchback (white gold)
Gone...1998 Rover Mk2 820 Vitesse Hatchback (green)
Gone...1992 Rover Mk1 827 SLi Manual (green)
Gone...1998 Rover Mk2 825 Diesel (green)

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by scoobyh123 » Fri Apr 28, 2017 11:07 pm

I don't know what if anything has been done to my 827 but it is very quick. Makes my Coupé feel slow and that's with the cat still on it - remove the cat and it really flies! The Coupé no longer has a cat and isn't a problem at MoT time - in fact it passed with flying colours today.

The Cupra is to coin a phrase, what it is. It's a product of the hot-hatch generation and nothing wrong with that but if you compared it to a 220 turbo (Tomcat) i'm sure the 220 would chew it up and spit it out of the exhaust pipes. Again, that's a product of the hot-hatch generation.

The 800 is a car in a different mould, it's not really meant to be stupidly fast but it's meant to be fast enough while remaining safe and comfortable.

As such, all the boy racer brigade will lust after the Cupra R or similar and when they achieve their object of desire, drive it like they stole it until they crash it. This all adds to the statistics the insurers use.
It's reminded me of a Clio 1.2 i bought once with the idea of using it while i did some front suspension work on the Sterling. The insurance was astronomical on the Clio, 3 or 4 times what i was paying for the Sterling. When i queried this, i was told insurance companies load them incredibly highly because all the boy racers want one (so they can imitate the Williams Clio), the boy racers that can't afford one will steal one or strip it for spares to sell to fund the one they do own and so on. Again they end up 3' cubed because of unintentionally close inspection of the passing scenery.
This all pushes the premiums up.

However i didn't crash the one i had (it was never running long enough!) or have it stolen, when i sold it i made more than what it had cost me and it brings me back to what i said before - i was no more likely to crash it than i was the Sterling.
Cheers,
Dave

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by traineefarmer » Sat Apr 29, 2017 8:22 am

scoobyh123 wrote:As such, all the boy racer brigade will lust after the Cupra R or similar and when they achieve their object of desire, drive it like they stole it until they crash it. This all adds to the statistics the insurers use.
It's reminded me of a Clio 1.2 i bought once with the idea of using it while i did some front suspension work on the Sterling. The insurance was astronomical on the Clio, 3 or 4 times what i was paying for the Sterling. When i queried this, i was told insurance companies load them incredibly highly because all the boy racers want one (so they can imitate the Williams Clio), the boy racers that can't afford one will steal one or strip it for spares to sell to fund the one they do own and so on. Again they end up 3' cubed because of unintentionally close inspection of the passing scenery.
This all pushes the premiums up.
Yep. It's not just the car, but the demographic of the drivers that set premiums.

The XC90 can be a bugger because of its popularity as a school run car (engaging politically incorrect mode). A slow safe car, but capable of inflicting huge amounts of damage to surrounding vehicles when a "yummy mummy" tries to park a car nearly as wide as it is long in Tesco car parks.
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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by scoobyh123 » Sat Apr 29, 2017 10:27 am

If one is really a yummy mummy, one should really shop at Fortnum & Mason or Waitrose at the very least! Tesco? Nah! :lol:

Joking aside, the best bit of parking i've seen in recent years was in fact by a yummy mummy in an XC90 in my local High Street. The gap was barely longer than the car, no additional parking aids such as sensors etc and to rub it in, the handlebars were on the wrong side!
As was the driver - she was in the USAF and from things she said, more used to parking F-15s than XC90s but she got it in, first go with only a slight minor correction to straighten up once in the slot, all in a slot i wouldn't have attempted in my 760! :shock:
Cheers,
Dave

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by zcar12 » Sat Apr 29, 2017 11:49 am

A big Thank You to all you gentlemen for putting on record your various experiences and headaches trying to arrange car insurance. I thought it might be just me having all these difficulties for whatever reasons. As has been stated, they know we have to have their product, its called regulatory capture. If only we could compel them to pay out in the event of a claim!

I finally chose to go with L & G for a total premium of £116.43, with protected NCB, as the policy seemed to offer the best value for my circumstances. Seems my insurer was unhappy with the amount of my premium and sought to bump it up substantially. Now, they will not be getting any money from me. Go figure! As a great man once said, "though this be madness, yet there be method in it"

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by scoobyh123 » Sat Apr 29, 2017 5:15 pm

As another great man once said (although not in these words exactly) "half a loaf is better than no bread" - if you're previous insurer hadn't got greedy and wanted 2 loaves he'd still have half a loaf.

Glad you got sorted anyway Nick. :wink: :D
Cheers,
Dave

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by metelmickey » Wed May 03, 2017 2:35 pm

my insurance went down £5 by moving 4 doors down the road ( now in dads place ).
MIKE

just got a 827 mk2 coupe and loving it, more commanly known as mad mick ( used to run a nitros injected firebird ) still missing my rover, now got a BMW 735 1999. now got 2003 760l, a 6.0ltr V12 and 445bhp. :evil:

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Re: CAR iNSURANCE Recommendations/tips or advice

Post by scoobyh123 » Wed May 03, 2017 9:06 pm

That's mad Mike - i remember you telling me where you lived and knowing it myself i can't see what difference those 4 doors would make, still only one way in or out for a car unless you have a Star Trek style tractor-beam of course! :shock:
Cheers,
Dave

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