Another year's run out and it's insurance time again. Now, I /hate/ ringing round for a decent quote! "Quote me happy"?! Faahck off! Anyone here can probably appreciate, you usually get some poor girl on the end of the phone following a pre-defined list of instructions. 10 minutes into the list is the: "do you have any modifications to your vehicle?" question. Oh dear. Yes... I've got sh*t-loads of mods! Then if they'll even insure a mod'd car, you have to sit there for ages explaining what all those mods are to someone who knows nothing /at all/ about cars. "Hold on, I'll need to ask someone about this". That sound familiar?! If they come up with a decent quote, there's always that niggling doubt in the back of your mind that they've misunderstood something which could ultimately lead to you not being insured should you actually need to claim.

 

Anyway, I'm not hear to moan. This is a quick word of warning to people considering serious mods. Not declaring your mods IMO is completely pointless. You'd quite simply be f*cked if you had a claim. God forbid what'd happen if you mowed down a pedestrian! I've seen people here with ridiculously low quotes, and TBH it just looks dodgy. If you're going to mod a 300, which already isn't exactly a cheap car to buy and maintain, make sure you can also afford to insure it! Cutting corners or point-blank lying about anything done to your car isn't an option. If you don't have the money, don't mod the car. Or drive something cheap.

 

I know a few other people here are (were?) with Adrian Flux. I like Flux because they actually have people you can talk to about what you've had done - /and/ they understand. It appears they'll also sort out insurance for just about anything. Last years policy covered me for all mods and up to an agreed amount of horsepower (550 bhp as it happens). OK, so it was a real pain in the ass filling out the pages and pages of forms to declare everything, but hey.

 

I rung Direct Line again this year. They sent me a "you could save money if you came back to us" letter - I was insured with them the year before last, before my engine rebuild. That conversation I just described above... exactly that. The upshot of this painful conversation was they would not insure anything with mods totalling over 10 grand... which if you think about it, isn't really a lot of (serious) mods. It's basically a complete engine rebuild and a pair of turbos. Nothing else.

 

So I'm with Flux again this year. Fully comp (duh!), unlimited mileage, 8 years (protected) no claims... just under 1,400 quid. Sound a bit nasty? Well, personally I feel a lot better about forking that out than I would worrying for a year that I might not be insured.

Not inviting anyone to come pinch my car, but I regularly forget to put the roof back in overnight. A couple of times the neighbours have come round and knocked on my (already open) front door to let me know. But noone worries any more. Noone would wanna nick the Millennium Falcon anyway! ;)

 

I will shop round next year, regardless of how painful it is. I don't expect it'll ever be much better tho. I don't /feel/ shafted. Just like everything else with this car, it's just more money. One day I might grow up and get a sensible car. Pfft.

Just out of interest, how do you go about finding out how good/bad your postcode area is?

 

Someone posted a list on the RX forum a while ago...

 

...but I think things will have to change soon. The BL code where I live covers at least 20 square miles - they ignore the second part of the postcode and just load the whole thing because it happens to cover one or two streets of Bolton gangland. In my local (at least 5 miles from said streets) there's one of every marque you can think of outside the pub every single day* and no-one has had any trouble in the 18 months I've lived there.

 

As soon as an insurer works out they need better granularity and start doing it they're going to take some serious business off the :xxx: at Quote Me Happy - and all the business they win will by definition be low theft risk. That would be the best kind. There's money to be made there and I can't believe no-one has done it yet.

 

Since it varies so much by postcode there can't be that many of us writing them off, otherwise the loading would be on the car...

 

* Well, alright, excepting Lambo and Ferrari, although I have seen a 308 a few times.

PS nice rant mate ;)