Aibu to ask for your best car for teen recommendations

[Bluejeanjen]

My god son is learning to drive and needs a car. The insurance is mental! I’m going to help him out and he has savings. He has a max budget of about 4K (I know - lucky boy!) and I’ll be giving him £1000 but there will be about £1300 insurance to cover! I’m not very car savvy. Any one have experience in this? Is it better to go really old for the first one or a bit newer. The insurance seems as bad for all! Thanks so much

Police? Policy!

@RightYesButNo

Pretty sure Clarkson said teenagers should drive volvos to lower death rates because hardly any teenager would be seen driving a volvo. It's not what you think of when you want a car to go fast, sound good and pick up girls.

Avoid fiestas, focus', golf's, clios , civics etc. They all up the insurance. Even polo's would actually, but not as much as the ones above. Skoda would be good, or citroen or Peugeot, but with French cars the reliability can be dodgy, electrical issues galore.

Older is better incase they crash it. The safety ratings are probably still fine anyway, don't need new to be safe.

My daughter has a Peugeot 108, no tax, good on fuel. Cheap on insurance.
My son had a clio and now has a Peugeot 208, his insurance is £130ish a month and he's 18

@SmokeyDevil Ah yes, can’t tell you how much more sexy a Fiesta is vs. an old Volvo estate I mean, the difference is that if hit by a lorry, one of them may allow you to walk away without a scratch and the other may crumple to nothing. If he said there might be less teen pregnancies if every teen drove an old Volvo, I could see it. But staying alive, I stand by my assertion it’s because they’re bloody great tanks. And they have bigger engines than most of the cars being cited now so I went, erm, bit faster than I should have? Hell, if they still made them like they used to, I’d snap one up immediately. I think cars having painted bumpers is the biggest scam going; it’s so if someone even barely taps you, you’ve suddenly got a huge scratch that either had to be buffed and painted or takes away value. Versus the glory of the HUGE rubber ring around the Volvo. I feel like I tapped half the walls in car parks in our shire when my grandad was trying to teach me, but not a scratch. The glory days. Really, if they made those estates like they used to at the equivalent PRICE they used to my god, I’ve become my grandad I’d buy a new black one and paint it with racing flames

I agree with what a PP said about old Volvos when I passed my test I had a 1ltr fiesta thaybcost me 1700 in insurance as 3rd party only, less than a year later I had a 2 litre Volvo 440, wonderful car, really safe, easy to drive had heated seats and cruise control, everything the fiesta hadn't and it cost around £400 to insure!! Insurance is often based by how many of that age group make claims in that type of car, so if you go for a popular among new drivers car like a fiesta then of course the statistics say that they Are more likely to have a claim in that vehicle purely because more have claimed.
If you go for a Volvo or something unpopular for new drivers the insurance is likely to be less!

I’d highly recommend admiral for insurance policies - you can do it as a multi car with yours which gets you a discount, and having DH and I as named drivers on DSS’s policy also brought it down quite a bit.

Another vote for Hyundai. I have the i20 and it's brilliant, cheap to insure and economical to run. Much easier to park than the Fiesta I learnt in as the turning circle is much better. Only slight downside is it can be a little sluggish to accelerate in stop/start traffic, but that's probably a good thing for a first car/new driver. Accelerates just fine in the higher gears, so no issues on the motorway. For his budget, he could get a nearly new i20 with all the bells and whistles if he wanted to!

I bought an i10 for my first car - good safety rating, lowest insurance group, very low tax (£20 or £30), decent interior (doesn't feel super low budget), comfy, nice little car.

I'd definitely recommend!

At that price point (up to £3k ish, to account for insurance) I can see a few 2014 plates on Autotrader in good nick.

Another vote for a Hyundai i10.

I drive one and it's fantastic - surprisingly spacious inside, £30 tax for the year, low insurance (I pay just over £300 per year, and I've been driving nearly 4 years), decent boot space and very safe.

Also to add, mine has air conditioning, a built-in USB charger, CD player, radio, and controls on the steering wheel and heated windscreens. The newer models come with bluetooth etc too.

Mine is a 2016.

My first car was a 2012 Aygo which I bought in 2017, and it’s still going strong. I’ve had no problems with it and my mechanic always comments on how reliable the Aygo is. I pay £0 road tax and it cost me £800 to insure in the first year with a black box (I was 22 at this point). I now pay around £300 per year without a black box.

Yes, it’s a relatively small vehicle, but I can easily get into the tightest parking spots, and get through the smallest gaps on country roads when Range Rover drivers try and force me into the brambles to force their way through

I expect your definition of need varies from mine OP. I'd suggest he waits for a year or more before having a car.

It's the insurance that will set him back a big chunk of that money. A little runaround with a relatively small engine size will keep down the insurance and cars up to 10yrs old are still safe and most have security features as standard that will help.

Japanese and German cars you seldom go wrong with. Korean cars are generally very reliable and safe as well. Kia's are often for sale at second hand used dealerships but with some remaining warranty and servicing and they're cheap to run and insure as well.

I'm currently up to 250k in a VW Touraeg and before that I drove an old Nissan for two years as a mobile tack room traipsing bales, tacks, rugs, dogs and crap around every day. One of my favourite little cars was a Honda I loved driving, never had any problems with it at all but sadly it was written off in floods.

My cars get an absolute hammering as well I really don't treat them well and just rag and off road and put them through it but Japanese and German cars can take it.

Do not even get within 20ft of anything French There's a reason so many second hand sales are Renaults (Clio's more often than not) and Citroen's – they're absolute shite. Cheap to buy but that's cos they're cheap to make.

Cars with a manual gearbox or full automatics are ideal but semi-automatics, Quickshift / Tiptronic gearboxes with an automatic / electronic clutch – stay well from.

If you're not too fussed about the style, look and just what a cheap runaround, it can be worth picking up a decent second hand car at the lower end of your price range and just having Third Party no frills insurance. New drivers tend to prang, bump and scrape whilst they're getting the hang of things and it's not always worth getting full comp insurance which will cost a bit even at just TPFT.

Honda, Hyundai, Daewoo, Nissan, Toyota, Kia etc – cheap little motors and safe for new drivers overall.

Renault, Citroen, Peugeot – NOPE

My son passed 2 years ago at 20 years old. Myself and his dad went halves on car and insurance. Bought a citroen c1 for £1250 and I shopped about on comparison websites to get insurance with a black box for £750. Think that was with Hastings. His black box score was 98% but Hastings wanted more at renewal so shopped about again and got it with first central.. No black box and less than £300 with breakdown cover.
Last weekend he wrote the car off into a tree at 60 mph and jumped a hedge into a field.
Thankfully he's fine and the car did its job of keeping him safe inside.
So I can recommend the c1/107/ aygo type. Super cheap to run.. Think we once got 600 miles out of it on a full tank (£30ish) little or no tax.
And surprisingly more safe than you would think when rammed into a tree at high speed