Mileage/usage restricted car insurance?

My family has a car that we don't drive much but I keep it around in case I put the e30 Down for some work or if we need to take trash off..... etc.

Long story short is we only put like 5k on it last year and plan to do less this year. Is there a cheaper insurance available for low usage cars? Could i do like a classic car insurance in a 02 car?

Could this be transferred over to a race only cheap car? Like buy a beater for only autox and keep it on cheap insurance and only drive it to events?(this is just me musing)

Similar circumstances here.  I haven't found anything like what you're looking for from a "traditional" insurer, and the specialty stuff (Grundy, Haggerty, etc.) thinks I drive my car too much for a collector policy.  Specialty also won't write if there's a minor driver in the household.  Between 4 cars, 3 drivers (one a 17 y.o. male) and living in Michigan, I pay an OBSCENE amount for auto insurance. 

I have all my cars insured with State Farm.  Three are considered commuters (one for each driver) and the other 2 are considered "pleasure use" as they each get less than 5,000 miles a year.  They automatically assign a daily to each driver.

The 2 non-commuters are not dirt cheap to cover but I do pay a reduced premium on each one.

Assuming the car isn't worth much, do you have liability insurance coverage only?

Triple A uses mileage in their pricing pretty extensively. 3k/year is the lowest I could get with my liability insurance, and it's stupid cheap at least for me. 

Do your homework and triple check.  You might be able to find a stated-value coverage, but the caveats are often very restrictive.  I looked into Hagerty for the 67 LeMans.  I can cover it for $50k for cheap premiums, but the way the policy is written I can only drive it with white gloves on an unoccupied road on a sunny day above 70 degrees.  Okay, not really, but almost.  If I decided to drive it to work on a nice day and something happened, it wouldn't be covered, my policy would be cancelled, and it couldn't be covered by Hagerty again.

The way some companies write their limited-mileage policies means you are basically allowed to drive it on to a trailer or drive it to a car show.   Just do your homework.

State Farm (and some others) do a type of coverage that kinda covers "project cars."  I called my company when my Impala got banged up a bit.  I took it off the road and made it a project but it was still drivable so I needed to keep it as a spare ride.  They let me put it on some kind of inactive status.  If I went out to start the truck and it had a dead battery, I could call the 800 number and tell them to make the Impala active as of right now and I could drive it to work.

Most collector car policies won't touch a "regular" car even if it's only driven 1000 miles per year.  They are strictly for collectors/classics/etc....  But as has been said, many carriers will rate you on mileage driven.  I know State Farm has a low mileage rating.

kazoospec said:

Similar circumstances here.  I haven't found anything like what you're looking for from a "traditional" insurer, and the specialty stuff (Grundy, Haggerty, etc.) thinks I drive my car too much for a collector policy.  Specialty also won't write if there's a minor driver in the household.  Between 4 cars, 3 drivers (one a 17 y.o. male) and living in Michigan, I pay an OBSCENE amount for auto insurance. 

What ever happened to cheap PL-PD in Michigan?  I had my 91 Saab added to our two car household (no teen drivers), and the rate for their PL-PD equivalent was very close to what we pay for full coverage on our primary vehicles.

Checked into a couple classic car insurance companies, and they had minimum car values for their policies that were well above what the Saab is worth.

So the car has been sitting because I can’t afford the insurance to drive it.

**Edit- our State Farm agent offered us a low mileage discount, but only in conjunction with installing some kind of “driving habit monitor” in our cars.  No thanks...

I had low-mileage policies when I was with State Farm & have them now with Safeco too. 

paranoid_android said:

kazoospec said:

Similar circumstances here.  I haven't found anything like what you're looking for from a "traditional" insurer, and the specialty stuff (Grundy, Haggerty, etc.) thinks I drive my car too much for a collector policy.  Specialty also won't write if there's a minor driver in the household.  Between 4 cars, 3 drivers (one a 17 y.o. male) and living in Michigan, I pay an OBSCENE amount for auto insurance. 

What ever happened to cheap PL-PD in Michigan?  I had my 91 Saab added to our two car household (no teen drivers), and the rate for their PL-PD equivalent was very close to what we pay for full coverage on our primary vehicles.

Checked into a couple classic car insurance companies, and they had minimum car values for their policies that were well above what the Saab is worth.

So the car has been sitting because I can’t afford the insurance to drive it.

**Edit- our State Farm agent offered us a low mileage discount, but only in conjunction with installing some kind of “driving habit monitor” in our cars.  No thanks...

In Michigan, you get killed by medical coverage (because there are no lifetime caps), uninsured motorist, no fault, etc.etc.etc.  Even just PL/PD is stupid expensive.  Going PL/PD to full coverage is usually 15-20% of the total premium.  My son's car is PL/PD and, IIRC, that saved me about $20/month.  

In reply to Curtis :

I think your understanding of the Hagerty driving restrictions is a little off. I have their coverage on my truck and it’s not that bad. They cover you for pleasure drives and car shows and are just trying to make sure the car doesn’t get used as a regular commuter car. And even if you did it would be covered but they would drop you in the event of a claim if they found the mileage or usage were not as agreed. They would still have to cover the claim though. 

One of their aims is also to make sure the car is kept in a garage as much as possible. That prevents a ton of claims on a classic I’m sure. 

I carry full coverage on everything, even beaters , just because it costs such a small percentage of the total premium. 

kazoospec said:

paranoid_android said:

kazoospec said:

Similar circumstances here.  I haven't found anything like what you're looking for from a "traditional" insurer, and the specialty stuff (Grundy, Haggerty, etc.) thinks I drive my car too much for a collector policy.  Specialty also won't write if there's a minor driver in the household.  Between 4 cars, 3 drivers (one a 17 y.o. male) and living in Michigan, I pay an OBSCENE amount for auto insurance. 

What ever happened to cheap PL-PD in Michigan?  I had my 91 Saab added to our two car household (no teen drivers), and the rate for their PL-PD equivalent was very close to what we pay for full coverage on our primary vehicles.

Checked into a couple classic car insurance companies, and they had minimum car values for their policies that were well above what the Saab is worth.

So the car has been sitting because I can’t afford the insurance to drive it.

**Edit- our State Farm agent offered us a low mileage discount, but only in conjunction with installing some kind of “driving habit monitor” in our cars.  No thanks...

In Michigan, you get killed by medical coverage (because there are no lifetime caps), uninsured motorist, no fault, etc.etc.etc.  Even just PL/PD is stupid expensive.  Going PL/PD to full coverage is usually 15-20% of the total premium.  My son's car is PL/PD and, IIRC, that saved me about $20/month.  

Michigans' insurance laws are berkeleyed up.  The other 49 states sort of follow a pattern to auto insurance, just with some different twists/variations (some more significant than others).  Michigan is on an island all by itself in how they do it.

I use stated value coverage thru donegal on my zephyr. It was cheaper then hagerty and less restrictive. I drive between 2k and 5k miles with it in the summer 

Duke said:

I carry full coverage on everything, even beaters , just because it costs such a small percentage of the total premium. 

It isn't that way around here. Full coverage is somewhere around 2x to 2.5x more than just liability.

RevRico said:

Triple A uses mileage in their pricing pretty extensively. 3k/year is the lowest I could get with my liability insurance, and it's stupid cheap at least for me. 

I have Liberty mutual and asked for a low millage discount as well as for them to give me the monitor things that also give you a discount. Two of my cars go less than 2500 miles a year with my DD seeing about 10k. We got a significant discount for both low millage and good driving on our policy. Something like a total of more than 30 percent if I remember. 

Daeldalus said:

Duke said:

I carry full coverage on everything, even beaters , just because it costs such a small percentage of the total premium. 

It isn't that way around here. Full coverage is somewhere around 2x to 2.5x more than just liability.

Full coverage can be as much as 5x basic liability. Shop your policy around.  For my jaguar it was about $125 a year to add it with just liability with full coverage it was over $600. 

I suppose I need to find an insurance broker so I can look for something better than what I have now.  I'm paying a staggering amount every year for three cars when only one of them gets driven at a time.  

Years ago when my ex- and I had a 2007 MINI that we basically used like a classic car, I was talking to my Hagerty rep and joked about wishing we could put that car on one of our policies since that was basically how we used it. She responded with, "have her call us - we can't do it in PA (where I am/was), but since the car (and my ex-) are in NJ it might be possible."  Insurance rules vary a lot depending on the state.

Hagerty doesn't have a mileage limit (I imagine monitoring that would be a PITA), but the cars do need to stored in a covered and secured place.

Ian F said:

I suppose I need to find an insurance broker so I can look for something better than what I have now.  I'm paying a staggering amount every year for three cars when only one of them gets driven at a time.  

Years ago when my ex- and I had a 2007 MINI that we basically used like a classic car, I was talking to my Hagerty rep and joked about wishing we could put that car on one of our policies since that was basically how we used it. She responded with, "have her call us - we can't do it in PA (where I am/was), but since the car (and my ex-) are in NJ it might be possible."  Insurance rules vary a lot depending on the state.

Hagerty doesn't have a mileage limit (I imagine monitoring that would be a PITA), but the cars do need to stored in a covered and secured place.

Yeah, that's the arrangement I have with Hagerty's on my 2007 Rx-8 in CT.  I drive it about ~2-3000 miles per year.  The same restrictions others mentioned, although I didn't get the impression at all that Curtis got (nor did I see it in the contract).   I made it clear that any of my cars with them (91 Miata, 94 Spec Miata, the Rx-8) may be used for a track day.  And that track day may be down in PA or NJ or whatever.  They were fine with that, even if means the car is parked at a hotel for the event.   As they explained to me on the phone, you can still drive it to work when the weather is nice, but it has to be in connection with an "event," such as picking the kids up and going out for ice cream or taking a friend/co-worker/business partner to lunch, etc.  Basically, they're trying to ensure that it's going to be a special occasion for you to drive that vehicle, so you'll be exercising additional care when driving it, I think.

However, in order to be insured by them, the car has to be "interesting or important" or some other such words..  I don't know that they're interested in insuring a beige Camry simply because it's not driven much.

Minimum liability coverage bottoms out at $35-40 per month per car for me while full coverage has generally been about $120/mo. I dont mind paying for full coverage on the few cars I would ever carry it on, but the liability adds up and gets very annoying considering i can only wreck one car at a time anyway but it's priced as though if i'm splitting my driving between 3 vehicles i'm somehow exposing them to 3 times the risk when it's more like a 0% increase. 

It's looking like my highest mileage added to any one vehicle over the past year will be about 10k on the Cayenne that has full coverage. The remainder of it probably adds up to 6k split between 3 or 4 vehicles I might have driven 'a lot' in the past year. A lot for me is probably anything over 2k/year since I usually split my mileage between tons of vehicles. I've put about 1k on the Highlander i bought (to flip) last month, and i would already say ive driven it 'a lot'. 

In reply to dculberson :

Haggerty seems to promote this nebulous understanding of what they cover and how you can use the car.  My understanding is that you are only on solid ground if parked in a  show field or driving around aimlessly and not stopping in anything that could be described as a "parking lot". So for example if you were out for a drive and stop for ice cream and got hit in a parking lot, you would not be covered and you would also be canceled.

Legally it is difficult for them to get out of a liability claim, but it is pretty easy to weasel out of the agreed value portion of the policy.

What is confusing is that they send me a magazine each month showing people driving their cars on epic north American tours or going on vacations; pretty sure none of that would be covered?

The businees model is a lot like Gyms where it requires a majority of the subscribers to never use the service.

Liability only seems like the most logical move here.

I have my race beater Tercel on it, my Yaris is somewhere in the middle, full coverage on my Highlander and wifes Fit.  My other project Tercel is "inactive" status, I pay around 200-225 a month via StateFarm.

I inquired about another car i was going to put on the road as pure extra redundacy and they still wanted $35 a month, I felt like that was high and made a post about it on Facebook, and comparing to everyone else my costs are definitely on the low side.

Whenever I get my 1uz Malibu finished I am going to inquire at Grundy and see what my options are.  I had Hagerty before and when they tried to double my premiums after 1 year with no incidents other then using the free towing once when i sunk the floats in the carb when tuning for the turbo.  Far as I am concerned, F Hagerty.

NOHOME said:

In reply to dculberson :

Haggerty seems to promote this nebulous understanding of what they cover and how you can use the car.  My understanding is that you are only on solid ground if parked in a  show field or driving around aimlessly and not stopping in anything that could be described as a "parking lot". So for example if you were out for a drive and stop for ice cream and got hit in a parking lot, you would not be covered and you would also be canceled.

Legally it is difficult for them to get out of a liability claim, but it is pretty easy to weasel out of the agreed value portion of the policy.

What is confusing is that they send me a magazine each month showing people driving their cars on epic north American tours or going on vacations; pretty sure none of that would be covered?

The businees model is a lot like Gyms where it requires a majority of the subscribers to never use the service.

As I mentioned above 2 years ago (4 or 5 posts up), that isn't inline with my discussion with them nor with my understanding of the legalese in the contract.

WonkoTheSane (FS) said:

NOHOME said:

In reply to dculberson :

Haggerty seems to promote this nebulous understanding of what they cover and how you can use the car.  My understanding is that you are only on solid ground if parked in a  show field or driving around aimlessly and not stopping in anything that could be described as a "parking lot". So for example if you were out for a drive and stop for ice cream and got hit in a parking lot, you would not be covered and you would also be canceled.

Legally it is difficult for them to get out of a liability claim, but it is pretty easy to weasel out of the agreed value portion of the policy.

What is confusing is that they send me a magazine each month showing people driving their cars on epic north American tours or going on vacations; pretty sure none of that would be covered?

The businees model is a lot like Gyms where it requires a majority of the subscribers to never use the service.

As I mentioned above 2 years ago (4 or 5 posts up), that isn't inline with my discussion with them nor with my understanding of the legalese in the contract.

But you do prove my point...No two people will have the same understanding of what is acceptable.

Recently retired. I have two cars with Haggerty and two with Normal insurance. I would like to reduce the fleet to one Real car and one Toy car, but Hagerty requires that I own and operate two Real cars. Need to see if my Normal insurance company will cover the Volvo restomod. They did cover the Volvo 760 with a V8 conversion, so fingers crossed.