The High Cost of Insuring a Sports Car - and How to Counteract It

Jan. 31, 2012 - PRLog -- For many people, the pinnacle of automobile ownership is buying a sports car. After all, who doesn't have fond fantasies of cruising down a coastal highway, taking hairpin turns with ease, and feeling the wind blow their hair (because the top is down, of course)? Unfortunately the sports car dream often comes with an unpleasant wake-up call:  the cost of insurance.

Insurance companies set their premiums for specific vehicles based on the perceived risk of a claim. There are three main reasons that sports cars represent a higher risk than sedans or SUVs: the age of the drivers, the likelihood of theft, and the risk of a crash.

Driver Age is a key factor in the cost of sports car insurance because a significant number of these drives are under the age of thirty. It's no secret that single men under the age of twenty-five get hit with the highest insurance rates, due to their penchant for high-pace driving, but even those slightly older are considered more likely to be reckless drivers.

The risk of theft is almost a no-brainer. Sports cars are cool, cute, and expensive, which means people want them. Even older sports cars are at a greater risk of being stolen than the brand new family grocery-getter, because they can be taken apart and sold for parts. Because of this, most insurers increase the cost of insuring them in order to off-set that risk.

Sports cars are at a greater risk of crashes because they tend to have extremely powerful engines that encourage speeding. It's far easier to exceed 80 mph without realizing it in a zippy little ragtop coupe than it is in a subcompact, and high-speed driving leads to high-speed collisions causing more damage and greater injuries than their slow-speed counterparts.

Put together, these three things mean that the average sports car owner is likely to pay 15-20% more for insurance than his or her SUV-owning friends, but there are ways to find relatively cheap car insurance.  By comparing quotes from several insurance companies, keeping your car in a locked garage at night, not adding after-market parts, and asking your insurance agent for discounts, you can save a significant amount of that "sports car surcharge."

If you own a home, and insure it at the same place that holds your auto insurance policy, you can reduce the cost of your car insurance even further, and if you put more than one car (even that SUV or sedan) on the policy with your sports car, you'll qualify for a multi-car discount.

The higher cost of insuring a sports car can be a rude wake-up call, but by knowing why the insurance costs more, and how to mitigate that cost, you can return to living - and driving - the dream fairly quickly.

Learn more by visiting http://www.insurancespecialists.com

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The automotive car blog Global Test Driver reviews the latest models of coupes, convertibles, sedans, hatchbacks, wagons, crossovers, SUVs, trucks and exotics. Stationed in Detroit MI, we feature the latest car news from American and across the world.