My first car was an EG Civic, 1 of 16 in the country in this colour/model combo and 1 of 9 in manual, it was only a 1.5lsi non vtec with 92bhp but weighed IIRC 925kg, so pretty light, would absolutely smash my mates mk4 Fiesta Zetec S 115bhp... I paid £2336 to insure it monthly, IIRC £550 upfront and something mad like £160+ a month for 11 months!
I wrote it off idiots slamming their brakes on in very bad weather down a blind hill excessively when it wasn't needed in a 50 so I had nowhere to go, told the insurance company but didn't claim against myself, this was about 6 months in IIRC...
Then I got a EK civic, finished the year on the first policy, obviously didn't get a NCB, BUT my insurance on the faster 115bhp EK civic was now £749? Then blew the gearbox on that 7 months later, switched over to a 137bhp 2L Accord Sport Vtec IIRC about £850, that then allowed me to get my first of 5 E36 BMW's for £1100ish IIRC?
So TLDR, IMHO it WAS worth paying stupid money for the first civic despite the crash as regardless it has always allowed me to insure faster more expensive cars afterwards, even with a crash inbetween upgrading, I think it just shows you're serious and probably respect the car more/are whiling to put serious money into both the car/insurance/tax? VS driving a shed worth nothing?
These were always in my name with no-one else on the policy, and always fully comp, 3rd party fire and theft is often ironically more expensive, I always make sure I state the proper value of the car that decent examples on similiar mileage sell for on ebay/auto trader/forums - and not the bs price valuation companies/trade-in's provide.
When I first insured a seriously modified beamer of mine, they literally said to me on the phone if you'd said it was worth 9k vs 6.5k your insurance would have been cheaper as we don't tend to insure stuff of that value... Anyway next year it had even more parts to fit and declare so was worth a lot more, my insurance went down loads - as I did quotes with 2 different values so it wasn't just the extra years NCB!
Funniest thing is, on the same car I fitted a way bigger engine/gearbox/diff/big brakes/fully adjustable coilover suspension/poly bushes/recaro bucket seats/interior swap/posh ££££ vintage italian wheels etc etc for it, made the car literally over double the power and pretty much only the shell was left of the original car, made it a litre/2cyls bigger engine with a fully rebuilt plated LSD diff with custom ratios etc, the insurance went down to half the price of standard with the original engine!
Oh and all my insurance coverage has always had the ability to drive anyone else's cars too, I think this is always worth it, especially as a petrol head enthusiast who has many mates who restore/modify their cars and want to share them with each other and see what can be improved etc.
I also like the idea that if I had to say drive someone to hospital in their car and I wasn't near mine, I can. People often don't think about things like that, did that for my parents for example and a mate.
But yeah the moral of the story is, buy it yourself/insure it yourself, build up your own NCB, and buy something you actually want and then you can pretty much insure anything reasonably quickly as it proves you're very serious about your cars/trusted/experienced. Silly fast/expensive stuff now seems to cost more in tax than it does to insure.
This def wouldn't be a thing if I'd driven a shed/snail worth nothing. So it's still very worth it if you have something in mind in the future you really want to own regardless of if it's fast or not, just makes it nice and cheap to insure then.
