John Hartley asked:


You might think that whatever make or model of car you have, auto insurance claims will be similar – and therefore, so will premiums. We all expect to pay more to insure a $200,000 Lamborghini than an ordinary Chevy or Ford sedan because parts are expensive, the car is likely to get stolen, and you are more likely to have an accident driving it fast. But surely the cost on insuring one 4.0 liter four-door sedan is the same as another? Not so. Even among ordinary cars and suvs, all autos are not equal when it comes to auto insurance claims.

The cost of insurance depends on many things such as:

- The likelihood of you having an accident – suvs that do not handle well will generally get a poor rating compared with modern sedans

- The level of injury you are likely to get in an accident – some cars are much better than others

- The cost of repairing the vehicles

The liability cost varies from model to model

These factors are taken into account along with auto insurance claims when the premiujms are set by insurers. So which are the autos to avoid, and which are good? You might expect imports to cost more to insure than cars made in the USA. Not necessarily. For example, Audi and BMW are generally low on the risk of liability in an accident, but the Audi S4 and TT and all BMWs are expensive to repair. Not too many surprises here. Generally, Chryslers are no so good on liability costs, and the Chevy Cobalt, Colorado and Silverado 3500 are pretty bad. The Ford Mustang is also bad, and the Focus and F350 are not good either.

Among the Japanese, Mazda does not rate highly, and Honda generally rates well, but its Ridgeline truck is not so hot. Toyota ranks highly, although the Prius, Tacoma and Tunda are expensive to repair. So you can see that it is not safe to rely on a certain maker, and assume that all its models rate highly.

Check how auto insurance claims affect the cost of insurance

Therefore, before you buy an auto, check out its ranking for crash and repair damage. Actually, the easiest way to do that is get some quotes from leading insurers, as auto insurance claims are taken into account in deciding the premiums they charge. This way you will be able to find what you need to buy a good price.

What you want here is to get all the quotes for the autos you are thinking of buying at one place. I have found that that best place to do this is at a site where you just key in the details, and up come quotes from many insurers. This solves two problems – you find which is the best auto, and which company offers the best price.

Liane Wood asked:


It is a common misconception that everything that is inside your vehicle is covered under your auto insurance policy in case of theft. The truth is that only the vehicle itself and attached equipment is covered under an auto insurance policy in Ontario Canada. While auto theft claims are an on-going event, there are certain things you should know before you load up your car with valuable merchandise and leave the car parked on the street overnight.

For example, if a person is taking a TV in for repairs and the car is stolen with the TV still inside it, the TV is not covered. So too, if you have been visiting relatives during the holidays, and have not emptied the trunk filled with gifts and your car is stolen, while the car is covered on your auto policy, those gifts are not covered on your auto policy.

If a person is away on holiday and has luggage and clothing in the car and the car is stolen, the luggage and clothing are not covered under the auto policy.

So how do you insure the contents in your car? Quite simply – items such as a TV, luggage, clothing, cell phones, laptop computers, and CD’s are covered under property insurance.

Therefore, if you have both property insurance and auto insurance, any auto theft claims will not cover the contents inside the vehicle, but your property insurance will cover the loss of these items. However, note that you need to pay the deductible on both policies in order to seek compensation for your losses.

There is one caveat, however. Let’s assume that the CD’s stolen along with your car fall under the deductible. You would have to decide whether or not it is worth it to pay the difference. This holds true for clothing, cell phones, and other items which may not exceed the deductible.

Unfortunately, if a thief wants to steal your car, they can take it in seconds because today’s car thiefs are sophisticated and aware of every new auto theft prevention item on the market today.

According to one Canadian source, here are the most stolen vehicles for 2007:

*1999 Honda Civic SiR 2-door

*2000 Honda

2004 Subaru Impreza STi 4-door. This model also had the highest theft claim costs.

Acura

Dodge

Audi

These sources also state that “none of the most frequently stolen cars are equipped with electronic immobilizers that meet the National Standard of Canada. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, regulations requiring all new cars, vans, light trucks and SUVs to come equipped with electronic immobilizers did not come into effect until September 1, 2007. The Honda Civic is a good example. Newer year models in which Honda did install immobilizers meeting the National Standard of Canada appear much lower on the list.

The next time you visit relatives, or go grocery shopping; check your car and trunk to ensure there are no valuables in the trunk or back seat. Prevention is the first line of defense against auto theft claims.

Shay West asked:


In case you still do not know what full coverage auto insurance is, here is some information that will surely enlighten you. Having full coverage auto insurance means that you are fully protected against any incident that may happen to you and your car because you have more than just the minimum auto insurance policy required by your state.

But since you are covering everything, this means that your auto insurance will cost more than just the minimum requirements. And because of this, most drivers opt to just avail of the minimum auto insurance requirements than have their vehicles fully covered. For some, this works, but there are others who require full coverage auto insurance.

So, what is the best way to purchase cheap full coverage auto insurance?

There are actually several ways in going about finding full coverage auto insurance policies without having to spend a lot of money. First is to search and compare auto insurance companies’ offers. Exhaust your resources and do not limit your search through readily available ones such as the yellow pages. There are a variety of resources like advertisements on TV and the newspaper, billboards, word-of-mouth and the Internet.

The next thing you could do is to look for an auto insurance carrier that offers discounts for various reasons. Auto insurance companies may give different discounts depending on your good driving history, your age, the kind of vehicle that you drive, and on how many vehicles are under your auto insurance policy.

Other companies sell more than one type of insurance policy, and if you buy two or more insurance policies from them, they would give you more discounts. For example, they would offer you very high discount on full coverage auto insurance if you buy homeowner’s insurance policy from them, as well.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that to have more coverage equates to spending more money.

You only need to find the right auto insurance company offering the right discounts to get you full coverage auto insurance policy.

With all other things being equal, auto insurance rates for teen drivers may cost almost twice as much than that of an adult driver. Purchasing auto insurance policy for teen drivers usually raises a lot of household’s expenses by as much as 50 percent or even more.

The reasons behind this are as follows:

Remember that insuring a safe driver means that auto insurance companies won’t have to shell out much money. Thus, younger drivers are considered less experienced and more reckless compared to the older ones, making the probability of them involving themselves in a vehicular accident fairly high.

Also, according to statistics, there are more car crashes involving teenage drivers than the sum of car crashes involving all other age groups.

Now, what can a teen driver do to cut costs on auto insurance? Here are the things they can do:

Teen drivers can raise their deductibles, try to get good grades in school, be made the primary driver on the family’s oldest or cheapest car, finish a course on defensive driving and use a smaller and cheaper car with a high safety rating.