im not far off turning 17 and need to get a car, what cars are good that are 1 litre or smaller and cheap on insurance. i was looking at getting an austin mini and do still really want one but am keeping an open mind so any ideas please.

im not far off turning 17…

…and cheap on insurance.

😐

how much is your budget, you will get shafted on insurance, Might be worth going on confused.com or gocompare. Enter your details, pick something like a Corsa and see what sort of quotes come back.

3,000 they want for corsa or nissan micra too
but i have had a crash on a moped and i think thats put it up a bit and it werent even my fault the dosey **** he pulled out and never looked then i woke up in an ambulance.

mini's go for loads either that or they are rust buckets with knackered sub frames and sills .You need a boring car that lads your age hate so steer clear of Corsa's as they are loved by chav scum and boy racers

the insurance prices go a Lot on the amount drivers of those cars have cost them in repairs etc,m corsa's, clio's, saxo's etc will all be High!
mini's too as they are Old and even a slight bump in one is lots of repair work lol! (owned 2, '77 and '79)
if you can find something thats a little less popular like a Suzuki swift maybe?? or maybe a Skoda fabia (earlier type) then you may come out with beter insurance quotes??

My fist car was the '79 mini, cost me £325 to buy and £550 to insure in '95, (and then about the same as both combined to keep it going lol! P38 filler is a mini owners Best friend! haha)has gone a bit silly since then for Younger drivers unfortunately for the sensible ones wanting a car!!

Advice for a first time driver: Classic car every single time. Classic car insurance and no road tax. Get yourself a Triumph Spitfire, or an MG Midget, or something else from the 70s. When I was 17, insurance on a 1300 Spitfire was just over £500 with a limited miles policy – think it was set at 7500 miles/year.

Mate has just got his son his first car and insured it, corsa lowest he could get, paid in one full payment for third party fire and theft is £1880 for a **** £400 Corsa……..Voluntary Excess £250. If he has an accident he'll get feckall back and probably actually owe the insurance company money. Legalised gangsters in my opinion.

My kids are in their early 20s and insurance seems to have doubled since they were 17 when a boy could insure a clio or metro for a grand

I would try and steer clear of older/classic cars, you are most likely to have a crash in the first couple of years driving so go for something a little newer with some impact protection/airbag.

apprentice at work has gone for a 1.5 diesel Megane, £35 road tax, cheap as chips on fuel, reasonable sized car
Boy/Girl racer cars like Corsa/Peug/Micra/Clio/Fiesta/Polo all cost on ins. Go fro something that will not attract such high premiums and if you are a biker something you can get bikes in. Mazda 3, Toyota Corrola etc

i got insured on my rents Toyota Aygo, just over the 1k mark. bit of a faff to get any bikes in it though.

Nissan Micra or Ford Ka?

Just look for rust on the silks/arches of the Ka.

I bought my mini when I was 16 and tarted it up for when I turned, got my lisence just after my 17th birthday and sold it when I turned 18. Insurance cost abit less than a corsa/clio etc, and mine was modified a fair bit 🙂

Wouldn't buy one as an only car/first car unless you're handy with tools, it was noisy, horrible to drive in the rain and the exhaust always used to get pulled off if I went over speed bumps due to it being so low. But it was great fun and I'd still have it if I had space for another car. Buying a decent one for decent money isn't easy, but they are out there (especially if you avoid eBay). Me and my dad did all the welding, body work and mechanical bits, so it didn't cost me too much to do and I've got all the gear I needed (tools, welders, compressors, engine crane etc.).

If you click on my user name it'll take you to the website I made about it if you're interested. Would definately do it again if I had the time and space.

A classic Mini would be nice, but as mentioned above, good ones go for silly money now, you could pick up a BMW version for the same sort of money!

Ford KA is a good modern day version of the Mini, handles well, for a small car and should cost you less to keep on the road.

Do you have to be 18 to pass your test these days?

There are a fair few 1.0 litre polos, but the 1.4 with a mighty 60bhp isn't much more to insure. Have a look on http://www.clubpolo.co.uk

I got a really old banger when I was 17 (2003), a 1.3 polo, and it cost £1100 for 3rd party fire and theft…

I reckon something small but slightly less popular is the way to go – far too many bad people in Corsas/Saxos/Clios to give the insurers reason to bump up their prices. Honda Jazz would be a good bet as it seems to solely be driven by 60+ women, but I doubt they're cheap. Maybe some small diesels?

It should be very easy to enter your details on Confused.com and change your car repeatedly to see what's cheapest.

If I was buying insurance I'd make sure I try out at least one price comparison website, at least one direct insurer who doesn't appear on those (eg Direct Line, Aviva) and at least one broker (Endsleigh have a reputation for young drivers).

As an aside to my first post, i have recently passed my test and bought my first car. It is a Fiesta 1.3 Flight. with the old Endura-E engine which isn't as pokey as the Zetec 1.25 that replaced it, so that made the insurance a bit cheaper. Even so it is still £523, which is the absolute lowest i could get it, with Carole Nash mirroring my 7 years bike NCB and being 30.

If i was you i would look at something like a Daewoo Matiz.

Its all relative.

First car at 18 (many, many years ago) – Renault 20 auto, car cost £100, insurance cost £300 and I earnt £5k pa gross as a Junior Programmer.

Equivilent salary now, probably £25k – therefore insurance at circa £1500 seems about right.

Cost me £186 to insure my £350 Hillman Avenger.
But it was 1986.
Totally & utterly ridiculous. You cant tell me the risk element is so great as to warrant premiums of nearly 10x the cars value. Is it any wonder most go on parents insurance, or even drive without it whatsoever.

Was playing around on DirectLine a year or so back, with an apprentice at work. He was gobsmacked that I could insure a Subaru for some daft low figure; whereas his was 12x that amount.

thanks but still none the wiser lol

Do not get a classic, least of all a Mini. If you have any kind of accident you will die or be horribly maimed. Plus you'll be forever fixing the damn thing.

It ain't worth it.

FWIW you can get a 10-15 year old VW or something reliable for easily less than £1000. You could've had my old Passat Estate for £800, that was brilliant, and ace for biking.

The Old Fart in me says go for something old because if it has no power steering or ABS then you'll learn to drive properly, plus it will be easy and cheap to maintain and a good introduction to mechanical stuff in general (Haynes manual plus socket set will go a LONG way!).

However, a battered old car is Not Cool. Especially an unreliable one. Do some research on classic cars (buy a few magazines) if you're interested.

My first car was a Citroen ZX. Really really plain ordinary car but had a diesel engine that would live forever and was incredibly cheap to insure. You can pick them up for a couple of hundred on eBay or car auctions (and insure for about the same amount, probably).

I'd also recommend a 2CV. Stupidly cheap to insure, incredibly easy to fix, lots of character, but not very much bling value.

HTH.

: P

thanks but still none the wiser lol

Daewoo Matiz 😉

thanks the passats are really nice aswell im gutted, but im only looking to spend bout 600-700 on the car if possible then under 2000 on insurance

Any old small car will do. You'll get charged the earth for insurance regardless. I picked up a 14 year old clio for £550

DO NOT go for a classic they don't have all the modern safety features and being a young driver you are highly likely to crash, I'm 30 and wrote off my car after 6 weeks, it was the air bag that saved me from serious injury if not death and if it hadn't had crumple zones I'd probably have lost both my legs.

I think being alive is worth more than saving a couple hundred on insurance

Do not get a classic, least of all a Mini. If you have any kind of accident you will die or be horribly maimed. [/QUOTE]

Sorry, but that's a load of BS. I wish I could find the pic I once saw of a VW bus vs a truck. The driver walked away, you'd be surprised.

I'd also recommend a 2CV

Saw a repeat of top gear where they drove a 2CV and an old Mondeo behind an aeroplane engine. Ok, so not likely to happen ever, but the results of rolling the 2CV were frightening. Roll cage non existent, the top of the car was totally crushed.

Wanna be sitting in that thing when it gets hit? Definitely not me.

As for Passats, I spent £250 on one and £600 on another.

Sorry, but that's a load of BS

HAH!

Some guy got lucky. Fine. You think Euro NCAP is a load of nonsense then?

MK1 or MK2 VW Polo just under 1000CCC and cheap to insure. Plus you cna get a bike in the back.

Look at 90's saloon cars with small engines such as vectra, mondeo or the Asian equiv you may find they cost less to insure than the popular <1000cc cars that are typicaly bought by youngsters and so typically crashed. Volvo 340 in brown???

Larger cars are also cheaper to buy, since demand for smaller ones is higher.

Where are you looking btw?

give up and get a motorbike, I did, even at 23 insurance is silly (£830 for near enough any sensible car you can name). Got a motorbike for 2 years (£200 for a 50cc, £400 for a 125cc), sold them, went to uni, looked at cars again and decided it was cheeper to get the bus or ride everywhere. Apparently premiums halve at about 21 form £1600 to £800, then again arround 25 to £400 ish.

It's not 10x the value of the car, its the cost of repairing the one you bump into.

give up and get a motorbike

And make sure you are prepared for death…

Exactly. People seem to be forgetting that the insurance companies couldn't give a monkeys about the value of any car a 17 year old is likely to have.
It's the higher than average chance of having to pay millions to an injured 3rd party that push the premiums up so high.

Thus, the weediest, most old granny car you can find will probably have the cheapest insurance 8)

….or a motorbike, since 3rd party injuries are much less likely.

molgrips:

And make sure you are prepared for death…

You really do talk some shit.

Look at anything that you dont like with a small horrible diesel engine. A 1l diesel horrible box like the matiz will probably be cheap to insure, add your rents as named drivers as this can reduce premiums by as much as 50%.

Apparently premiums halve at about 21 form £1600 to £800, then again arround 25 to £400 ish.

good luck with that …. if you have the NCB to back it up they do ….

was quoted 250 quid fully comp at age 23 2 years NCB on a spanking new 1.6 hdi berlingo car ….. same car sans NCB was near 2 grand – bought a van instead and got spanked royally for insurance …

first car will always be expensive – i found once you have that NCB and keep your record free of claims your insurance will half – infact my mate lost his licence in the first year for 2 speed camera offences – his insurance still halved the next year when he got his licence back (all points declared)

Sorry, but that's a load of BS

Its not 🙁

Close family member had a classic Mini. He wasn't a boy racer, just young and inexperienced.

First accident was after hitting standing water. He got lucky, rolled the car but had a soft landing and the car was virtually unscathed. Just a few deep scratches, minor dents in roof etc, and shocked family.

Second accident, same car, met another driver who was going too fast and had skidded over the centre lines on a twisty B road one morning. Mini collided with the rear offside of the other car as it swerved back to its own side of the road. Engine got pushed into the passenger compartment and the front of the car was demolished. He got cut out and a helicopter ride to intensive care where he stayed for several weeks, suspected brain injury, multiple broken limbs. Even basic stuff like lack of laminated windscreen meant his face got all cut up from the flying glass, no airbag meant broken jaw, head injury and teeth knocked out from the steering wheel. He was very lucky and is OK now, just a couple of facial scars plus the operations on limbs to insert metalwork. Several weeks of hospital visits for family.

If he'd had a newer car (not necessarily more expensive) with some basic safety features, he might well have walked away with bruising and bad whiplash.

Classic cars are fine for more experienced drivers but I think its foolish to recommend them to young drivers, especially on a cost basis. I considered posting this in my first post but thought it would be a bit OTT.

Seconded regarding getting a newish car with good safety features.
And Dazzo's admitted having an accident already – partly through not noticing someone likely to pull out in front of him.
😈