Buying and Insuring a first car for £3500-4000

RogerMesenseless

RogerMesenseless

RogerMesenseless

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Any recommendations? Obviously there's the usual suspects (Corsa, Polo, Fiesta) and so on, but part of me wants a bit of a wild card if possible.

18 Years old and have not had a license for long.

Iv'e looked at E30 BMW's (316i) but any quotes I get are through the roof.
 
Mazda 3 Sport 2.0, Toyota MR2 2.0, Mazda MX5 1.8, Volvo 850, Mondeo 1.8.

All of those gave me very cheap quotes as a new driver.
 
geekman said:
Mazda 3 Sport 2.0, Toyota MR2 2.0, Mazda MX5 1.8, Volvo 850, Mondeo 1.8.

All of those gave me very cheap quotes as a new driver.
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The engine capacity on all of those is very high for a first time driver. As fas as I'm aware its quite a large factor in determining your insurance?

Ill give some insurance companies a phone and see what they say nonetheless. ;)
 
SoundDoctor said:
The engine capacity on all of those is very high for a first time driver. As fas as I'm aware its quite a large factor in determining your insurance?

Ill give some insurance companies a phone and see what they say nonetheless. ;)
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Unless you're looking at very large engines, it often isn't that much of a factor. I've had a 2.0 car at 17, 2.0, 2.3 turbo and 3.0 cars at 18. Surprisingly, right now one of the cheapest cars to insure for me is a 5.7 litre jeep grand Cherokee.

Equally, there are some cars with small engines I find difficult to insure (1.2 corsa SXI for instance). Best way to do it is to set up an account on confused.com and run as many cars through as you can, and just find out which ones are cheapest.
 
As much as we all want a bmw for a first car its not that realistic unless money is no object.

You can get a higher capacity engine car for a first car if its not as "desirable" for example Volvo or some saloons while not exciting might actually be cheaper to buy than a small hatch and cheaper to insure........but aren't exactly going to be "cool".

As suggested look at some cars you like then do some quotes online.
 
When I was looking for my first car, the VW Lupo was the cheapest to insure by miles for some reason, and the 1.4 is quite nippy too ;).

My best quotes also came direct from the Liverpool Victoria website, so I would give them a shot.
 
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but what about a Lupo? Insurace quotes on the cars above are £1450+ (including a black box) so I've been looking at things with smaller engines. Lupo's can be bought for £1-1.5k with around 60-75k miles on them.

Any good?
 
I test drove a 1.4 Lupo with 40k on the clock and it was very nice to drive and nippy considering it's like a go kart, as for reliabilty I can't tell you on that one.
 
SoundDoctor said:
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but what about a Lupo? Insurace quotes on the cars above are £1450+ (including a black box) so I've been looking at things with smaller engines. Lupo's can be bought for £1-1.5k with around 60-75k miles on them.

Any good?
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But it's another obvious first driver car, and therefore the insurance is loaded.

Geekman above was right on two major points:

1) You will find that the cheapest cars to insure are those which the insurance companies simply don't associate with first time drivers.

2) You need to get on a price comparison website, and put in the details of a load of different cars and see how they differ.

You seem to be stuck in the mindset of a small car with a small engine must be cheaper to insure, and it simply isn't true.
 
It kind of is true tbh....in the main anyway.

If you can find the exceptions then brilliant, but tiny cars with tiny engines are "cheap" to insure
 
rodenal said:
It kind of is true tbh....in the main anyway.

If you can find the exceptions then brilliant, but tiny cars with tiny engines are "cheap" to insure
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It's different for everyone of course, but I've always found larger cars with smaller engines are the cheapest. Octavia 1.4, Mazda 3 1.4, Astra 1.4 Citroen C4 1.4 etc. I never had any luck with the sub 1.0 ecobox type cars, but maybe the OP will?
 
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