Finding Antique Auto Insurance

By Mark Alison
For classic car lovers, antique auto insurance may not be tops on your to-do list, but it’s something many classic car lovers learn the importance of only when it’s too late.

Do you love the classic car era from the 1950s? Do your interests run more to the dawn of the automobile age like the Model T and Model A? Perhaps you are more interested in the muscle cars of the 1960s or the classic luxury cars like Rolls Royce and Bentley? No matter what your niche or car era is you will need antique auto insurance to cover your investment. Standard auto insurance policies only work for cars newer than twenty or twenty five years old and if your vehicle is at the far end of that age group you will find that coverage is very limited as the actual insurance value for the vehicle is much less than what a fully restored collector’s vehicle would be.

There are a number of companies that offer antique auto insurance and none of them are the big insurance giants like Allstate, State Farm, Farmers, etc. You will not have the ability to go to an insurance website like esurance.com. insureweb.com or insurance.com to compare policies for your collector’s vehicle. You will need to contact the various companies directly get individual quotes and then compare them manually yourself. Antique cars generally fall into three categories based on the age of the vehicle. The first category is vehicles over twenty years old. The second category is for those vehicles produced before 1903 and those made between 1903 and 1933.

Generally vehicles depreciate with age while antique cars that are restored or in original condition actually appreciate over time. Because of this factor most antique auto insurance policies require a professional appraisal to set the value of the vehicle. If you transport your vehicle instead of driving it to shows there are special policies to cover your vehicle while in transit.

You will not have you regular comprehensive and collision coverage’s although there still will be uninsured and under-insured driver coverage as well as property damage, medical coverage, etc. Since collision will not be able to be estimated due to the lack of available parts you may be without your antique vehicle for months while it is being repaired. If your vehicle is in the gray area near the time where antique vehicle coverage starts and regular auto insurance ends you may want to opt for the more expensive antique auto insurance because even though you may purchase the higher premium full replacement insurance for your vehicle that coverage usually limits you to a comparable new vehicle rather than a fully restored antique vehicle.

JC Taylor is a company that provides two types of antique auto insurance policies. One is for vehicles older than 19 years and covers farm tractors, military vehicles, antique delivery trucks and of course, cars. The second type of policy covers modified vehicles including street rods, custom kit cars, exotics, rare cars, hot rods, replicas and modifieds. Their coverage includes the entire United States and will pay the “agreed value” based on market conditions and condition of the vehicle with no deductible in the case of a loss.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 7:28 pm and is filed under antique auto insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.