I've asked him today, he pays £680 with Admiral for a policy limited to 5000 miles.

He's actually 20, didn't get his first car until he was 18 and had that about 18 months, so he's a little older than I thought he was.

Whether you believe it or not, it's no skin off my nose and couldn't care less, but anyone who knows who I am on here (recent account, but I've been here since day one) knows my word is gospel.

The point was he'd be paying double that for an old car worth a fraction of the cost.

Car insurance is a weird thing. One of the popular "specialist" insurers (think it may have been Greenlight, but don't quote me on that) listed cars they don't cover and amongst that was any model of E36 BMW, whereas most insurers wouldn't bat an eyelid. I had my first E36 at 19 and paid £700-odd, which was only a slight increase over my previous Escort GTi.

A girl I knew a few years back who was about 20 at the time had been saving up for a MK1 Audi TT and when she got the cash together to buy, she started shopping for insurance assuming that the 180bhp would be cheaper on insurance, but the 225bhp model came up lots cheaper (think it was £900 compared to £1500 rough figures) and the way insurance is calculated by these insurance companies is their computer throws up a specific model and it's affected by all kinds of factors, but one of the biggest ones is the amount of claims against that very specific model and if there's a load of claims against an Audi TT 180 then it'll rocket the price up. And if there's very few claims against an Audi TT 225 then it'll make it that much cheaper, even though it's a more powerful, higher spec and probably more valuable car.

I have Trade insurance and my previous policy excluded only two specific types of car on the policy:

1. North American Imports
2. Ford RS Cosworth Models (It would cover the Granada/Scorpio Cosworth as that's not an RS)

But last year I switched to another policy which is more expensive, but covers a higher value and has no exclusions.

Professional drivers (Lorry/Van/Taxi etc) tend to pay more for their insurance as their job is seen to increase risk for some reason...

When I was on the forums as a young lad who'd just passed his test, my insurance on comparable cars was a lot less than a lot of the lads. I know my post code helps and I shopped around literally everywhere and even had the rep from CIS Insurance out. I paid £730 fully comp on a 1994 Escort 1.6 LX and 12 months later with 1 year NCD paid about £50 more for a 1998 Escort GTi with all mods declared.