Does a Classic Car Need Special Insurance?
What happens when the value of your classic car appreciates, but your standard insurance coverage doesn’t? Are you overpaying for worse protection without realizing it?
When your worst fear comes true and your classic is totaled, do you get paid out for what it’s truly worth? What's the best way to insure a collector car from the ‘80s or newer? Does my insurance let me choose the repair shop?
There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation out there when it comes to car insurance for older vehicles (or sports cars and rare cars) as well as what qualifies as a collector vehicle.
To help cut through the half-truths, AutoGuide will be hosting an Ask the Expert with Brian Rabold, the VP of Automotive Intelligence at Hagerty.
If you have a question about car insurance for your classic car, sports car or limited edition (or any other collector car insurance question for that matter) leave it below and we’ll be sure to ask Brian and get you the answer.
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I think special insurance or a comprehensive written evaluation of the vehicles worth are reasonable things to have.
An example - Our 2000 Eddie Bauer Explorer was written off last year. it qualifies as vintage, but the insurance company would not pay me what it was worth because I just had regular insurance on it.
I know, you're all laughing because it's just a 25 year old Explorer, but it was in excellent shape inside and out and ran flawlessly. There were a couple of online sights I checked and the average price on a 2000 Eddie was around $11,000 US. apparently they are in a bit of demand, not Ferrari pricing for sure, but definitely much higher than I expected.
The insurance company was not impressed or swayed when I showed them the sites showing the sale prices as between $8000 to $14,000 and offered me $4000. They would not budge. They also would NOT let me repair it myself. This was a minor fender bender that required both halves of the headlight, a drivers side fender and the fog light. Total cost from R Auto was $160.00 and paint and supplies would have been about another $150, but the Insurance would not budge, the truck was a write off and was going to the wreckers all for a bent fender and a headlight. (it was also completely drivable and the headlight still worked, just had broken glass).
If I had gotten an insurance evaluation before hand the results would have been very different I suspect. Around here the cost of a vehicle evaluation is about $120 which would have been worth it.