Music: Placebo - Placebo

I’ve been talking to my friends about getting a project car between us. Something inspired by Mighty Car Mods. My reasons for the car is something we can work on together and bring us closer but also to learn about how to maintain, repair and upgrade a car without worrying about having it ready to drive to work on Monday. Whilst I am becoming more confident working on my own car there is only so much I can do without risking breaking the car and being unable to use it for a while.

It’ll be nice to have a car we can all go out in and have a nice drive in whilst all being able to take turns driving the came car. At the moment I only drive with one of my friends and we take turns driving. At the moment I have the most powerful car and it’s only a 1.4 with 87BHP. The ideas we’ve come up with together are between 160BHP and 260BHP.

We need to decide why we want to get a car that is shared between us and what we each want to gain from this project car. Also how we’d benefit from owning the car and one of my friend’s dad is worried that we’d fall out over this car. I’d rather keep my friends than a car but it does highlight an issue of owner ship since we’d each own 1/3 of the car but all the paper work would be in my name. We each like our own cars but none of them are performance cars, we need a run up to overtake something and only on a long straight road.

Something that holds me back from changing cars, modifying a car or just getting a second one is insurance. Most of the quotes we’re getting for this project car are close to the price of the car itself. I don’t like the idea of spending £1500 on the car and then another £1500 on insurance. I’ve not the best driver in the world but I’ve been driving for five years without an accident or traffic offence and on the whole I’m a safe driver. However I can see that being only 24 and 23 years old, insuring a car for low mileage stating that all the drivers have another car they can use does look a bit worrying.

Car insurance does tend to confuse me when the quote does something odd. Two examples: If the Toyota Supra has a car alarm the quote goes up £60 and a 170BHP 2005 Ford Focus ST170 costs about the same a year to insure as my current 1996 Nissan Almera 1.4 with 87BHP. Also the Focus would be cheaper to insure if it was my main car and I used it to commute. If I didn’t have to worry about ridicules prices for insurance I could change the suspension, put on alloy wheels and swap my 1.4 for a 1.6 (it’s a straight swap) and enjoy my car more. Of my choice of car and modifications, insurance is the limiting factor.