Replacing the vehicle would probably exceed $20k. A years premium is $250 ..........? Liability insurance leaves you short $20k ....
If I had collector car insurance I likely would’ve been denied coverage since I was on my way to work, my old cars are all I drive for 3/4 of the year. I literally drive them everywhere.
3 reasons I just kept liability for years. 1: I’m cheap and I build cheap cars to drive. 2: I have access to frame equipment, paint booths, and do all my own work anyway 3: I usually have spare parts for my rides.
I use American Collectors Insurance for my classics, They let you have a stated value and the cost is based on that value
For me it’s this. I don’t insure for me. I insure for the idiot that’s out there that may run into me.
Fixing is a completely different situation than a total loss. If your garage burns down, someone steals it, a tree falls on it's you have nothing. I would have to pay 40 years of premiums to cover the loss of even a $10,000 vehicle.
Yeah, in your situation it makes sense. But over the past few decades, paying the extra grand or so per year to fully insure several cars (usually about 5) would have cost me the value of those $5-10k cars a few times over. The only time I had a loss so far was when I crashed my truck into a car that was stopped to turn left (my fault). I spent about a grand of my own money fixing it. And now that we have a couple new cars, which have full coverage and a $1k deductible...well, you get the idea.
I take my chances as the enjoyment of them far exceeds leaving them in the garage worrying about the value for me.
A side note. In my area, driving around is much like navigating your way around a market with a shopping cart.
On my T I went with just liability through AAA. The main reason I did was that the collector car companies all stated that the driver needed to be licensed for more than 10 years and I wanted my kids to be able to "enjoy" the car also.
Full coverage insurance is always a game of chance. The company is taking the chance that it is not going to get wrecked, and you are expecting it may get wrecked. The premium you pay is to make you feel better about covering your possible financial loss. My coupe has always been covered with only liability insurance. It was built from the proceeds of the hot rod before it got totaled. It also had only liability insurance coverage, but the lady's insurance that turned left in front of me covered it. With no out of pocket expenses in building the coupe, putting full coverage didn't make much sense to me. Even after the rebuild in 2018, it still didn't make much sense to me. That next build was the 39 truck. I had out of pocket money in it, and the full coverage that included road recovery wasn't much more then the liability would have cost. At the time we had 3 other insured vehicles with 2 licensed drivers, so I put full coverage on it. We sold the truck before it was time to renew the insurance. Enter in my 49, It was built from the sale proceeds of the 39, so very little out of pocket money was invested. When it became road worthy, I sold off my off topic truck, and reduced the coverage on my wife's car to just liability (it was old enough the extra money wasn't worth spending). We still had her car, and the coupe with regular liability insurance coverage, so I could have bought full coverage on the 49, but without having much of my money in it, it didn't make much sense to put the full coverage on it. I also wanted to drive the truck year around, and the specialty insurance wouldn't cover that. If the 49 gets crashed or stolen, it will hurt a bit, but we are retired, we can get by with one car for a while. I'm prepared to face the financial loss if or when that time might ever come.
I have Hagerty since 2016 and they seem to be fine so far. They were easy on the agreed-value thing. I had to take loads of pictures (should have soft-pedaled the engine pix... they asked me a few times if this was a "race engine"..). They had a slight problem with the car being in primer. I told them that the OG colors were gray and white, just that the gray is a little faded. I recently lost an OT car that was totaled while it was parked. I'm glad I kept the collision on it.
I'm insured with them too and I like the fact that they don't have mileage, date, season, kiss-my-ass restrictions on driving it. Their rates are good as well. I've never had a claim, but I have no reason to believe they're shysters when it comes to payouts.
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