Insurance for rarely used vehicles

LessThanSte

Right, thanks to the ridiculous new rules, it looks like i may now be forced to buy some yearly insurance to cover my 2nd car when i was originally planning on taxing it for the year and only insuring it when i was actually using it (a difference in price of roughly £500 according to quotes ive just had!).

Some people have mentioned that there are policies that can insure specifically for rarely used cars, which essentially insures them to sit on the drive (at a very low rate) which can then be topped up as and when its in use. Does anyone know anything about these. Im not sure how it would work precisely, but it sounds handy?

There is the trade off though between doing that or simply renewing tax every time i want to use the car, though with the time it takes them to refund unspent tax this could get quite pricey for a few months!

Anyone have any suggestions?

keeley1973

Hi. Not sure there is a suitable policy which will give you limited cover and then allow 'top up' for when you want to drive it. You can get Third Party only policies to cover it to sit on the drive but these days they are few and far between and you find that Third Party Fire & Theft (and sometimes even Fully Comp) are actually cheaper! Of course you can limit/restrict yourself on certain things to keep the cost down (i.e mileage and usage - we have our 2nd one at only 1,500 miles p.a and not including commuting and that makes a bit of difference). Also, would be interesting to know what you are doing about No Claims Bonus? I assume you have not maintained a full years cover on it in the past? As a second vehicle (assuming you have max NCB on your main vehicle) there should be places that would give you 60% introductory discount. Also consider other options to bring price down i.e if you are a male and you could put a female on (perhaps partner or mother - even if they do not actually drive it) that can sometimes help. When we renewed my husbands car, we added me as a Named Driver and it actually came down £45 even though I have fault claims (it is because they don't like his occupation and if they think some of the risk is transfered to me some of the time, then this helps!).

Hope some of this is of use.