Car insurance groups can make an impact on your car insurance premium and these should be considered when you are purchasing a car if you cannot afford expensive insurances and high excesses, especially if you are looking for car insurance for a young driver.
Every vehicle is rated in a comprehensive system and placed in a group between 1 and 50. Group 1 would be the cheapest cars to insure whereas group 50 would be the most expensive.
Cars are allocated groups based on six key considerations, these are as follows:
1. How much it would cost to fully repair the car after an accident or damage
2. The length of time a repair would take (how long you may have to have a courtesy car if it is included in your policy)
3. The car value when new
4. Security of the car through factory standard security and how easy it is for the car to be stolen
5. The cost of parts for the car
6. The performance levels/engine size on the car
As you can see in general, both maintenance, insurance wise and actual running costs a group 1 car will be significantly cheaper than a group 20 or over car. Before buying your car it is worth taking a look at which insurance group your car is in as this would indicate the potential cost of insuring and running the car especially when comparing two or more cars.
One car model may appear in several different insurance groups due to the differences in engine sizes and editions, the Vauxhall Corsa 1.0 ecoFLEX Expression is in group one whereas the Vauxhall Corsa 1.3 CDTi ecoFlex S/S is in group 5 so it is important you are aware of this before purchasing a car under the impression all types of that particular model are in a low insurance group.
Groups one to five are considered to be the low insurance groups. To give you some idea on the distribution of the cars throughout these groups, we have some examples.
Group 1 – cars in this group tend to have an engine size under 1000cc with a few exceptions such as the Ford Ka Studio 1.2. Some cars in this group are Toyota Aygo Ice, Go and Blue, Toyota Yaris, Citeron C1, Peugeot 107 and the Suzuki Alto.
Group 2 and 3 – the majority of cars is this group have an engine size under 1200cc with exceptions such as the Peugeot Partner Teeppe.
Group 4 and 5 – engines also have similar performance levels to those in groups 2 and 3 but cars tend to be slightly larger such as the Peugeot 207, Volkswagen Polo, Skoda Roomster and Ford Fiesta Studio.
At the other end of the scale insurance group 45-50 is the home of many high powered cars such as the Porsche 911 Carrera 3.6, Maserati Gran Turiso and the Audu A8, these cars tend to have engines sizes between 3000cc and a massive 7000cc and values starting from £30,000.