My teenage son has been looking to buy his first car, after a lot of research by both of us, he has bought a used Vauxhall Corsa. The main reason for getting the Corsa was not because it was the best car in regards to safety, features price etc, but because it was one of the cheapest cars for a new driver to insure.
Insurance for New Drivers is Expensive
Unfortunately there’s no getting away from it, but car insurance for young new drivers is not cheap!
My son and I spent hours getting insurance quotes from various UK insurance companies and price comparison sites. There were huge variations in the quote prices from £1000 up to £8500 per year.
What You need to Know About Car Insurance for New Drivers
Car Insurance Groups
Cars in the UK are categorised into insurance groups:
Group 1: 1 to 10 – Cheapest to insure
Group 2: 11 to 20
Group 3: 21 to 30
Group 4: 31 to 40
Group 5: 14 to 50 – Most expensive to insure
On websites like Autotrader you will see the insurance category for the car being sold. On Autotrader website the insurance group is found under the ‘Running Costs’ section
The insurance group number will also have a letter on the end. The letter on the end indicates the safety level of the car.
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A – Meets standard security requirements
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D – Falls short on safety, placed in a higher group
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E – Exceeds security standards, placed in a lower group
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P – Not enough data yet; group may change later
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U – Security rated unacceptable; may need upgrades to insure
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G – Imported vehicle (parallel or grey import)
In theory to get the cheapest insurance you would want to look for a car that has the insurance group 01E. However in practice this isn’t the case. A car with a 10E category could be cheaper that a 03E. In fact I found that cars in the more expensive insurance Group 2 sometime had
