Does your teen drive your (fairly expensive) car?

[attheendoftheendofmytether]

Last year I bought myself a posh (to me) car with an inheritance. Really should have thought ahead - well I did but I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.

DH’s car is bigger and he uses it all the time for work.

We don’t have parking for a 3rd car and no street parking. Am I going to have to trade in for something smaller and cheaper or would you let your teens drive it when needed? I know new driver insurance is massively expensive but does the car make a difference to that ?

Don’t really want them to pass their test and then not drive at all but it’s not necessary for seeing friends as we live close to tube & lots of buses (and they’ll be away at uni most of the time).

Depending what car you have, the insurance for your teen could be absolutely ridiculous. Weve swapped our second car for a small, manual with a tiny engine and the insurance is still ££££ for our 17 year old. There was no way we would have paid the insurance on the car we had originally.

If you don’t think they would be fit to drive it, they shouldn’t be out driving anything tbh.

Agree with @tootiredtobeinspired some will just not be insurable for a teen who has just passed.

You can sometimes get temp cover for a day or a week but you might find adding to the policy is just not possible for a larger engine / newer car.

Friend is paying well over £2k on a small micra similar for her 18 yo who recently passed. He’d be uninsurable on their old Volvo c90,

I added both of mine to my insurance (even though 1 of them has his own car). It costs me an extra 1k a year.

Depending on what car you have, absolutely that will impact the cost or even the availability of the insurance. Powerful cars sometimes can't be insured for new drivers, for example, and an expensive car will cost more to insure anyway, but even more so with a new driver who is therefore considered higher risk.

Why does it have to be your car the teen drives? Your Dh uses his for work so I guess that could clash but surely a new driver is mostly using the car at weekends anyway?

DH’S is a huge car and he has specialist insurance for carrying very expensive equipment for work. Very OTT for a teenager.

So I think as we live 5 minutes from a tube and even closer to the bus, we are not going to sort driving lessons straight away. They can each learn when they are coming to the end of uni so they have max flexibility for work opportunities. We then haven’t paid thousands and thousands for insurance for not much gain and I can keep my car for now!

I was coming to this conclusion but you’ve mostly confirmed it. Where I grew up driving was essential and so it seems odd for them not to learn as soon as they can.

My car was uninsurable for a teen.

no price, nobody would even consider the idea.

Same. Why not put the details into a price comparison site (imagining it's the future so they're 17 and have just passed).

It’s quite a way off for me but when the time comes, my DC will drive my expensive cars to learn in. I don’t see why not? Unless they’ve proved themselves to be totally useless beforehand, it should be okay!

I couldn’t insure dd on my car. Think it was engine size rather than overall price. It had been ok when she was learning but not once she’d passed the test.

@attheendoftheendofmytether
We got no qoutes for my 18yo on our car, I am a new driver (2.5years 38) that put an extra 1k on the insurance! We can't afford a second car, and need the 7 seater. So can't get anything smaller. DS can't afford it without us chipping in more than we can afford.
DS is stuck with PT and his bike even though he can drive.
Would you trust them on a moped?

both our cars are uninsurable for a teen having passed their test. They are too powerful.

Run your car through something like CompareTheMarket which is exactly what we did with a hypothetical passed 17 year old. It might make you think the tube is a better idea.

I upgraded my reliable old lady car (she was great on fuel economy) when Ds1 passed his test mainly because I wanted all the new safety features that my car didn't have like collision avoidance with automatic braking, lane assist, blind spot collision warning, front and rear parking sensors and lane assist. My car is insurance group 10 and he cost £1.2k to add him to a brand new car. No black box, no data recording. Ds was 19 when he passed because he turned 17 in lockdown and you couldn't get driving lessons for a long time afterwards as the wait list was long.

He went to uni and there was no parking at uni at all so he didn't need a car. He just borrows mine, he is back home and working.

I ran so many cars through CompareTheMarket, just used Autotrader for registration plates to see what it would be for me and a newly passed teen. It retains all the details you just keep changing the plate and getting new quotes.