I’m Greg,
Pretty simple really, I like nice cars, I don’t have any real desire to spend my cash on a car I don’t think I would enjoy. I ride motorcycles on a day to day basis and at 19 my insurance on bikes is fairly reasonable, currently paying £350 for my yammy 850.
I wonder if any one on here has experience insuring an MX-5 at my age, or under 25 perhaps.
Cheers,
Greg
Hi Greg, welcome to the club. At your age mx5 insurance will not be cheap !!! However there are a number of things you can do to lower the cost, One, is to up the excess you would pay. Two, limit the miles you do a year. Three, make sure you have a cat alarm and immobiliser fitted. Four, ensure you keep the car standard until you have built up some no claims. Five, try and obtain a Brittish car, as opposed to a grey import. Six, you could also do an advanced driving course. All these will help lower the cost of insuring an mx5. I, like you started with motorbikes, and I still have two, but I must say since I’ve had the MX5 the bikes have started to collect dust !!
All the best
Jeff
Because the insurance system is so royally messed up, the cars in ‘low’ groups, are not always much less to insure than cars in the middle of the road. I sold my '73 MG B GT (which was a HUGE mistake) because it was too expencive to insure, but my brother is only paying about the same for his Saxo 0.00001!
The trouble is, I don’t really need a classic right now, I don’t plan to be here for much of next year and I know if I bought another I would never sell it! Been looking at things like the Fiat X1/9 and even the little suzuki cappos, but insurance on them is astronomical, due to the turbo and 8second 0-60, kinda works against the small engine. For the latter part of last year I was looking for a Spitfire 1500, which I would love, and I believe the MX5 was based on to some degree, but the whole classic thing writes that off for now. A Reliant Sabre would probably be perfect, but, have you seen one for sale recently?
I’m hoping the fact the early ones are deemed ‘classics’ by some insurance providers works in my favor, I don’t really need a big milage policy as most of my miles would still go on the bike. Maybe 5k.
Insurance will be between £1100 and £2200 Fully Comp I would say, depending on the usual factors such as location, garaged?, Mileage etc.
To expand on the above points, you will probably find that an imported car will be out of the question, even though they are cheaper to buy.
Simply, this is becase of the number of insurers that do not quote for imported cars - not an issue when you’re 25+, but if your cheapest insurer for a UK car cannot quote an import, you are probably looking at quite a big step upwards to your next one.
Usual advice applies - Get parents as named drivers (but check if that actually helps - sometimes it is worse), be realistic with mileage etc.
Of course, don’t stretch the truth - it might save you £100 just now, but if something goes wrong and your insurance does not pay out, and you land in court with Driving w/o insurance charges, it will not seem so cheap.
Keep in mind that even something simple such as saying it is garaged when it is not could be grounds to void any claim.
Ensure that you are the main driver, not a parent, for obvious reaons - it used to drive me mad when I’d pay more for the insurance on a 1.2 Fiesta than one of my colleagues (same age near enough) who had a 1.8 Focus and a write-off claim against his name.
Otherwise, the MX5 is an excellent car, and money well spent in my opinion… [Y]
I’ve insured 6 bikes in three years, I know not to mess about on insurance forms 
I have the luxury of being in the lowest risk post code and having a garage available.
Probably not going to be fully comp either, tp f/t will be fine for me.
3rd party f/t you can potentially half the above figures.
I assume that you are looking for a Mk1 (pop up lights), so you are probably just as well going 3rd party any way, because the likelyhood of a write-off in the event on even a minor accident is quite high, so the money saved in going third party would go a long way towards buying a new car.
Are you keeping your bike as well? If not, you might be able to get an insurer to recognise your bike no claims (at least in part).
I did consider getting the bike no claims recognised and selling her, but no, I don’t think I could do it to my self. My commute would be twice as long due to the inability to filter for a start!
It’s not so much the damage as the chance of theft, though my bike is on tpo, though due to a non fault accident I’ve made money off that anyway. In fact it’s the personal injury off that which has the chance of buying me a car if I so desire.
Is it footman james who recognise the MX5 as a classic?