Whats a good easy to manoeuvre starter car to buy learning to drive please?

truewraith121

hi,

I'm about to take lessons, but my brother-in-law is willing to help as well but doesn't have a car at the moment, so if you are able to purchase a car while on a provisional licence which I'm hoping i can what would be a good car to look for and be easy to control for starting out etc, and it would have to be automatic though.  no idea what insurance costs are or which are good to go for!

any help or advice would be amazing thanks

ps: late learner, so in my 40s

forgotmyname

They are all easy to control once you practice. What car to get?  One you can afford to buy and insure.

Nothing worse than saying congratulations you passed your test now you need to sell the car because the insurance
is too costly. Puts a downer on the passing part.

fatbelly

What's your budget for the car?

What's your budget for the insurance?

CliveOfIndia

As has been highlighted by previous posters, insurance is going to be the killer for a newly-qualified driver.  Whilst you're learning it tends not to be quite so bad since, by definition, you're always supervised.  But once you pass your test you can expect the cost to rocket.

Have a browse through Autotrader to get a feel for the sort of thing that's within your budget and that is suitable for your driving pattern.  For instance, something really small like an Aygo or whatever will be perfect for round town, but might be a bit tiresome if you regularly do long motorway journeys.

Then do some dummy quotes on one of the price comparison sites to get a rough idea of what your insurance costs might be.  This could well narrow down the list of alternatives that are realistically available to you.

Some of the results can be surprising.  It's an old chestnut, but it always used to be the case (it might still be) that a little Corsa, for instance, tends to be unusually expensive to insure.  Although it's a cheap car with a small engine, it's a favourite of young boy racers (sorry for the stereotype !) who tend to crash them a lot, so the insurance is priced accordingly.  OK, that's perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek, but don't automatically assume that a small, cheap car will automatically be cheaper to insure - get some dummy quotes to give to a better idea.

truewraith121 said:

so if you are able to purchase a car while on a provisional licence which I'm hoping i can

There's nothing at all to stop you buying a car, whatever licence you have.  Or even if you have no licence.  Of course, the logistics of test-driving it, insuring it, transporting it to your home, might need some planning, especially if you have no licence at all.  But technically anyone can buy a car.

Back when I was a kid, one of my friends who was mechanically-minded (his dad was a car mechanic, which helped!) bought an old wreck of a car when he was about 15 or 16 as I recall.  Spent a couple of years working on it and doing it up, then he had a really decent car to drive once he turned 17, and it had cost him peanuts.

Herzlos

I wouldn't recommend buying a car before passing for a few reasons; you don't want to be learning on 2 different cars, the costs are high and it's going to be wasted money if it takes you a while to pass.

If you insist on getting a car, before or after passing a test, I'd be trying to get the same one the instructor has, so that all the controls are in the same place and it feels the same.

Another option is that I think you can still hire dual control cars from some places by the hour. It's potentially not the same car as your instructor or the same car each time, but it'll be cheaper than buying a car.
For instance, Arnold Clark https://www.arnoldclarkrental.com/dual-control-hire

victor2

Herzlos said:

I wouldn't recommend buying a car before passing for a few reasons; you don't want to be learning on 2 different cars, the costs are high and it's going to be wasted money if it takes you a while to pass.

If you insist on getting a car, before or after passing a test, I'd be trying to get the same one the instructor has, so that all the controls are in the same place and it feels the same.

...

Lot of sense above. Also, don't get too carried away with buying a car because it's nice and shiny. It's almost inevitable that a new driver will have a relatively minor "mishap", like a minor scrape when parking. It hurts a bit less if the car already is showing some signs of age.

Lot of sense in looking at insurance cost as a newly qualified driver before looking at what you can afford. DD passed her test (in an automatic) when she was in her 30's. Ended up with a Toyota Auris. Great little car, with a reversing camera, like her instructor's car had, and very reliable. Strangely, her insurance was cheaper with her as main driver and me as a named driver that it would have been for just her. She still managed to reverse into an immovable object not long after she'd had it though!

daveyjp

Toyota Yaris hybrid.