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General >> Rally >> Insuring a Rally car??
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Message started by Gary_Woolverton on 09/07/4 at 17:50:25

Title: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Gary_Woolverton on 09/07/4 at 17:50:25

My friend and I have got a car that's close to going on the road.. should be done in time for Galway Cavendish.. but we just hit a major roadblock that we didn't think about beforehand.. I know it's one of those things we should have thought about before we started on this whole endevor, but the simple fact is that we don't have a clue how to insure our car!! :o

Anyway, we're at the point where we either spend some serious dough and finish the car, or call it quits. The fact that the above decision hinges on is if we can find insurance.. or how we go about doing so. We're both 20 and the car is in my name (I'll be co-driving), it's an 1985 Subaru RX 4dr, and it'll be trailered to each event, and seldom driven on the road in between events.. so it makes no sense to me to get the car insured as a regular road car (also unaffordable for us), also what do you do if they come to inspect the car?!? What is everyone else doing / what do you people suggest??

Thanks in advance!

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by DaveC on 09/07/4 at 21:09:09

Gary, hopefully others will chime in, however I thought I should point out one thing.

To run in rallies a car MUST be insured. When you are on road sections(transits) you are not under event insurance.

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Gary_Woolverton on 09/08/4 at 08:06:00

Dave, we're well aware that we need it.. just worried that we can't afford it. It'd be a shame to see our whole summer's work go to waste over something so trivial.

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by luv2drift on 09/08/4 at 08:20:36

Really? That's too bad... Another 'stick in the spokes' to building a competition rally car. Isn't an insurance policy cancelled or claim rejected if vehicle is used for a 'performance' event and what about the roll cage issue?

What would be wrong in convoying the competing cars between two sweeper cars to get to the stage roads? If they permit racing on these 'closed' roads, could they not allow a speed limit driven convoy to the stage sections? Most performance rally cars aren't street legal anyway, so what gives?

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by nhibbert on 09/08/4 at 09:11:21

Can you get Facility insurance for a short period? You might be able to get it before the event and then cancel it after to get a partial refund?

Also, I thought performance cars had to be 'street legal' and plated. The problem isn't with being legal, it's being insurable.

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by DaveC on 09/08/4 at 20:10:41

Sorry, from your reference about trailering and not using it on the road, I thought you were not aware of the requirement for insurance.

This is a real issue in Ontario, know anybody in Manitoba ;D

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Gary_Woolverton on 09/09/4 at 16:28:44

Well I've tried calling competition insurance, golden wheels (lant), TD, and a couple of other "regular" insurance companies... and if I tell them the car is going to be rallied.. they won't touch it. If I tell them that the car has a cage in it.. they won't touch it. So it would seem that lying to the company and just insuring it as a regular road car is the only way to go if I want to rally! Now the only thing that I know of that I haven't tried is to call a broker and see if they can hunt something down for me.. but it's looking pretty grim right now. May be a rolling chasis for sale soon :'( No wonder there's not many people rallying in Ontario.. even if you have the passion and the know how to build a car.. you still can't do it!

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Jeannie on 09/13/4 at 11:41:16

I wouldn't even think about lying to an insurance company. If you should have an accident on a transit, where that insurance would be applicable, they can say that you didn't advise them of the mods to the car and you would, in effect, have no insurance -- they would go after you for the money they had to pay out. :-[

Re street legal, if you watch WRC rallies, you'll note that sometimes they show a clip of how they are checking the cars to be street-legal -- brake lights, turn signals, mirrors, etc. -- the things that all cars must have on the street. The performance stuff is covered under the mandatory tech inspections (and logbook).

Check out the MCO forums -- there is info on a company that is setting up insurance for cars that are difficult to insure. I think it was on a Solo II forum, but there's lots of angst being expressed about insurance so do a bit of browsing there.

Good luck!!

Jeannie

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by davidvan on 09/13/4 at 11:53:19

Jeannie VE3JNE wrote on 09/13/4 at 11:41:16:

Check out the MCO forums -- there is info on a company that is setting up insurance for cars that are difficult to insure. I think it was on a Solo II forum, but there's lots of angst being expressed about insurance so do a bit of browsing there.

Good luck!!

Jeannie

Isn't Jeannie amazing?
She's right the link to the msg is here...

http://www.mco.org/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3236&SearchTerms=insurance

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Meengreen on 09/14/4 at 07:02:35

This has been done to death in the last year or two...

You Should have done you research!!! Search this and the MCO and Specialstage and you will find a ton of negative results in the search for insurance.

Many solutions suggested none that actually have come through.

Facility insurance is your ONLY option

Between $2,000 and $5,000 a year... In advance ....and usually non-refundable.

Anbody building a car should put this in their budget before they even start.
If you luck out and get it cheaper then Whoo hoo! more tires.

It's a sad reality...ralliests as a group are a very minor annoyance to the insurance companies so it's unlikely that we'll find a sympathetic corperation to help us out.

Andrew "been dropped once" Miller

PS: Lying to you insurance company is a VERY bad idea...as soon as they find out they will drop you for EVERYTHING and you won't be able to insure a bicycle for less than 2 grand!

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Nuwan on 09/14/4 at 18:31:14

http://spda-online.ca/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=568&forum=2

feasible motorsports insurance is right around the corner ;D

Title: Re: Insuring a Rally car??
Post by Gary_Woolverton on 09/16/4 at 13:09:45

Yeah.. this new program looks like it should do the trick, so I'm looking into something I've heard about being able to put temporary insurance on the car (through facility).. see if we can do that since pines is going to be our only event this year. Failing that, we'll have to wait until after december... as much as that would annoy us after working our asses off all summer to get the thing to where it is right now.

Andrew, we're well aware, but thanks for the lecture anyway ;) Just a couple of kids following a dream.. we were bound to make a mistake or two along the way. But it looks pretty positive for now. We've decided to stop stressing out about the rally car and take the ice racer up to sprints this weekend and take our time to get it finished for tall pines.