Car Insurance For 17yo Son

lakesuk

Hi all
My son has just turned 17, so I'm looking to buy him his first car.  I am really struggling to work out what impacts the price of the insurance, in order to choose the right car for him.

there sadly doesnt seem to be any insurance company who will take a call, take the drivers details, and then advise how much the insurance quote will change depending on the car.  So I have tried to do it online;

Id assumed that getting a like for like quote on the same website, that I would see the price of insurance changing dependning on the insurance group of the vehicle.  but this doesnt seem to be the case.

I can generate a quote based on the car reg and my son's details, using a car that is listed as group-4 on the parkers website.  It comes back with £3,500 (for example).

I then edit the quote, with all the same information, except for the car. I change the  car to be a group 2 car, and the quote goes up to £8k!

Sites like autobuyer allow you to filter by Insurance Group, but if you use the filter, and check the results against Parkers, the info looks incorrect.

Basically Im just trying to decide what car to buy, but im really struggling to find a resource that will tell me which car to choose.  

Does anyone have any good online resources where it's easy to compare the price of insurance for a 17 year, that lets you see exactly why the price is going up/down....and ideally see the same quote against multiple diffent cars?

cw8825

You need think outside the box. 

Imagine the cars that most 17 year olds want. Then avoid them
don’t focus so much on groups 
the insurance is going to be expensive anyway. 

As far as I know there is not a place to do multiple quotes on different vehicles. 

Will need to be done one by one 

DullGreyGuy

Insurance group is created by a company called Thatchams that predominately focuses on the cost of repairing the car after an accident and its security features. What it doesn't tell you and what insurers rate heavily is what type of person typically drives this car? 

My much over used example of comparing a brand new Mini Cooper S and a Mercedes SL500 (at the time a group 23 and £20k car with a group 50 and £90k car) the Merc was notably cheaper to insure. 

What you ideally want to buy is a car that no youngster would be seen dead in. In my youth our friend with a Rover 200 was paying a fraction of the price of those with Fiesta's, 105s etc despite it having the bigger engine, bigger body etc. Its how Direct Line got so burnt when they provided 2 years insurance on every Saxo sold because they didnt consider that the demographics of users would change as no teenager wanted the preceding Citron AX

lakesuk

cw8825 said:

You need think outside the box. 

Imagine the cars that most 17 year olds want. Then avoid them
don’t focus so much on groups 
the insurance is going to be expensive anyway. 

As far as I know there is not a place to do multiple quotes on different vehicles. 

Will need to be done one by one 

It doesnt quite work like that sadly.  When Ive been comparing, a quote on a bog standard VW UP can come out more expensive than a quote on 1.4 polo.    

cw8825

lakesuk said:

cw8825 said:

You need think outside the box. 

Imagine the cars that most 17 year olds want. Then avoid them
don’t focus so much on groups 
the insurance is going to be expensive anyway. 

As far as I know there is not a place to do multiple quotes on different vehicles. 

Will need to be done one by one 

It doesnt quite work like that sadly.  When Ive been comparing, a quote on a bog standard VW UP can come out more expensive than a quote on 1.4 polo.    

That was the point I was trying to get at. 

As explained above. You need to think of a car that most new drivers don’t want. 

Any of the typical first cars will have statistics showing they are crashed more often so cost more to insure

Just because it’s a low group does not mean it’s automatically cheaper to insure than a high group

tacpot12

I used Compare The Market to get quotes for my step-son recently. He had just passed his test, but is 23 years old, so the quotes were much better than for a 17 year old. It allows you to pur all their details in, and then just change the model of car to get quotes for each vehicle. 

I found Skoda Fabia's to be the cheapest to insure. Fiat Panda's are also cheap, but they have a very poor crash rating. You really don't want to be in the front seat of a Panda in an accident. They ended up getting a Ford Fiesta and paid about £1500 for their first year's insurance. 

lakesuk

tacpot12 said:

I used Compare The Market to get quotes for my step-son recently. He had just passed his test, but is 23 years old, so the quotes were much better than for a 17 year old. It allows you to pur all their details in, and then just change the model of car to get quotes for each vehicle. 

I found Skoda Fabia's to be the cheapest to insure. Fiat Panda's are also cheap, but they have a very poor crash rating. You really don't want to be in the front seat of a Panda in an accident. They ended up getting a Ford Fiesta and paid about £1500 for their first year's insurance. 

Thats really useful, thank you !