You can maintain a flawless driving record, keep your deductibles high, take every discount to which you’re entitled, and could still wind up paying inflated car insurance rates. It’s not your fault. All else being equal, some vehicles are inherently more expensive to cover than others.

For starters, the more affordable the car or truck is in the first place, the cheaper it will typically be to insure. Less expensive models tend to cost the least to repair, and will reach a lower value threshold before being “totaled” after an accident. A car’s safety ratings are also considered. Models getting top marks in crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration get favorable rates because of their advanced occupant protection.

Importantly, vehicles that fare the best in terms of their claims histories, including the cost of physical damage the car both incurs and inflicts upon other vehicles in a crash and the severity of personal injuries involved, enjoy the lowest rates.


By that actuarial recipe, the 2019 vehicle with the cheapest auto insurance premiums is the Honda Odyssey minivan at an average $1,298 per year. The average cost among all 2019 models is $1,812, which is up from $1,645 a year ago. That’s according to the annual survey of car insurance rates conducted by the website Insure.com. We’re featuring the 10 cheapest 2019 models to insure – of which nine are SUVs – in the accompanying slideshow.

“Vehicles on the least expensive list tend to be driven by families, which means more mature driving and perhaps because the inside may be a bit of a locker room for their kids the car owner isn’t worried about exterior small scuffs and doesn’t make claims for minor items,” explains Insure.com's consumer analyst Penny Gusner,

The Odyssey takes over the top spot in this regard from the previous low-premium champ, the Jeep Wrangler. It gets top marks for safety and, frankly, it’s tough to get into trouble driving one of the most family-minded rides on the planet, especially with a gaggle of kids along for the ride. A rip-roaring Nissan GT-R sports car this is not.

Speaking of which, the GT-R tops Insure.com’s list of the costliest models to cover for 2019, with an annual average premium of $3,941. We’ll concede that the chance of anyone cross-shopping the two models is slim-to-none, but that’s an average spread in insurance costs of $2,643 per year, based solely on vehicle choice.

It doesn’t take a particular stretch of logic to fathom why the GT-R, which packs a twin-turbocharged V6 engine that puts a ferocious 565 horsepower to the pavement and starts at around $100,000, should cost around three times as much to insure as the above Odyssey with a base sticker price at about $30,000. “Drivers of vehicles on the expensive list pay a lot of money for the vehicle, so if it has extra horsepower, will likely want to try it out,” says Gusner. “Also, they will mind if their car gets a scuff and will want to get minor damages fixed up to keep their expensive ‘baby’ in excellent shape.”

For 2019, the GT-R nudges out what had been a longtime leader among budget-busters, the Mercedes-Benz AMG S65, which drops to the eight-slot on the list. Still, as you can see, Mercedes holds down half of the top 10 slots among the costliest-to-cover cars, all of which are pricey ultra-luxury and/or high-performance models:

Most Expensive Cars To Insure For 2019

Nissan GT-R ($3,941)
Mercedes Maybach S650 ($3,917)
Porsche Panamera ($3,887)
Mercedes AMG GT R ($3,751)
BMW M760i xDrive ($3,705)
BMW M6 Gran Coupe ($3,637)
BMW i8 ($3,603)
Mercedes S65 AMG ($3,585)
Mercedes SL63 AMG ($3,549)
Mercedes S560 4MATIC ($3,514)


Note that the figures quoted in Insure.com’s study are averages based on a hypothetical 40-year-old male driver having a pristine driving record (see below for the survey’s methodology). What a given motorist will actually pay to insure a particular vehicle depends largely on personal factors including his or her age, sex, marital status, address, credit rating, and driving record. Altogether these factors are used to determine a motorist’s statistical likelihood of getting into an accident or having a vehicle stolen or otherwise damaged. Statistically speaking, a single male teen having multiple traffic tickets and/or accidents on the books who lives in a crowded and crime-ridden urban area will pay the most of all drivers for auto insurance..

At that, it always pays to shop around for coverage because the actuarial formulas used to compute car insurance rates are moving targets that can vary significantly among providers, with some companies charging more or less to cover certain combinations of risk factors than others.

 

Author: Jim Gorzelany

Source: www.forbes.com

Retrieved from: Forbes Media LLC.

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