Young driver's insurance.

Tiexen

Quiet_Spark wrote: »

Buy him a classic car, my eldest (18) passed his test last week and paid £800 fully comp for a 2 litre convertible Triumph Herald Vitesse with no mileage or other restrictions imposed.

Aside from the free road tax, it is also very easy to maintain as there is sod all to go wrong.

Thinks I'd rather have my 18 year old drive a car with crumple zones, side impact bars, air bags and abs brakes.

UsernameAlreadyExists

Don't forget to wrap them in cotton wool and bubble wrap too

LandyAndy

Quiet_Spark wrote: »

Buy him a classic car, my eldest (18) passed his test last week and paid £800 fully comp for a 2 litre convertible Triumph Herald Vitesse with no mileage or other restrictions imposed.

Aside from the free road tax, it is also very easy to maintain as there is sod all to go wrong.

I've owned Heralds and Vitesses. I would be reluctant to put my child in a Vitesse. For anyone who has learned in a modern car the road holding and general dynamics of a Vitesse will come as a huge surprise particularly in the wet. I hope your son finds out about it on a quiet roundabout in daylight and not a sharp bend in a country road after dark.

jimjames

IanMSpencer wrote: »

Where you live may have a big effect, but we found that insuring young drivers on larger cars was surprisingly cheap. One of our friends has their young drivers in an old Mercedes 190 (precursor to the C class from about 1995 I think, perhaps older) and we insured ours very reasonably on a Golf 1.6 - a 105bhp car with a top speed of supposedly 120mph.

So take a look at the insurance on larger hatchbacks.

Definitely good advice to look at different vehicles.

A friend also found that pickups were very cheap to insure. So things like Hilux or L200 were well under £1000 to insure, seem to be that cars not associated with young drivers or not "cool" seem to be much cheaper to do.

balloonist

Brand new VW up! (Move bluemotion) for my 17yr old son who passed his test one week earlier was £840 fully comprehensive with Privilege (£500 excess)

£1200 with either parent on policy

Good car too

iolanthe07

balloonist wrote: »

Brand new VW up! (Move bluemotion) for my 17yr old son who passed his test one week earlier was £840 fully comprehensive with Privilege (£500 excess)

£1200 with either parent on policy

Good car too

That's a really good deal. You don't live on the Scilly Isles, do you?!

forgotmyname

Tiexen wrote: »

Thinks I'd rather have my 18 year old drive a car with crumple zones, side impact bars, air bags and abs brakes.

I would rather have something that didn't crumple on impact. I had a Rover SD1, They did the 30mph crash test and the cabin did not deform one little bit. All the doors opened and closed as normal.

I would rather be in one of those than some little hatchback with a 5star NCAP rating.

Quiet_Spark

Tiexen wrote: »

Thinks I'd rather have my 18 year old drive a car with crumple zones, side impact bars, air bags and abs brakes.

Clarkson once said that if airbags were replaced with metal spikes the accident rates would drop dramatically as people would pay much more attention to what was going on, I reckon he was spot on with that statement.
My son is well aware of just how vulnerable he is, and (unsurprisingly) he drives accordingly.

LandyAndy wrote: »

I've owned Heralds and Vitesses. I would be reluctant to put my child in a Vitesse. For anyone who has learned in a modern car the road holding and general dynamics of a Vitesse will come as a huge surprise particularly in the wet. I hope your son finds out about it on a quiet roundabout in daylight and not a sharp bend in a country road after dark.

It was the first car he ever drove the day he turned 17. The only time he's been near anything that falls apart at the mere hint of a bump is when he took a handful of pre-test lessons and the actual test itself so he is well aware of it's shortcomings, but I know what you mean

forgotmyname

Mr Austin or Mr Lord once said....

"Good brakes encourage bad driving"