Get a hold of Martin Walter over on the MCO website.

There is a thread over there about caged cars and he mentioned he is on Facility.

Or try Bryce Baker or Derek Vincent here - Derek mentioned at Tall Pines that the Talon is covered under Facility.

There is a glimmer of hope recently about this. Contact me ross at tallpinesrally dot com for more info.

Hello, I have been intending to join the forum for a while and this topic has pushed me to finally get it done. First of all I'm curious as to what glimmer of hope Ross has, anything to help ease the pain of insurance should be a big help to get more people and cars out on the stages. I run an insurance brokerage in Peterborough and am aware of the challenges everyone has to go through to get proper coverage.

I had the dream a few years ago of buying a rally car, did a Facility quote and couldn't believe the price. Over $2,000 a year for a car that would be driven maybe 6 days max. In Toronto it must be $3,000-4,000 for the year, how do you guys do it?

Facility really is the only option, and any broker HAS to provide you with insurance. The best thing to do is contact the same broker you have your street car and home with, at least they have more incentive to help you out. Faciltiy does not pay comission like a regular insurance company, so we really don't make any money on a policy with them. As Martin pointed out on the other forum an appraisal/inspection of the car is required, which is pointless because you are only buying liability coverage, no physical damage coverage for the car. But insurance companies love rules that make no sense and make our lives more difficult!

The best way to save money is to insure the car for the least amount of time possible. Ex: Start the policy May 1st for Lanark and cancel Nov. 29th the day after Tall Pines. Then you are only paying for 7 months coverage plus a small penalty for cancelling early. Doing this over and over will annoy most bokers, but make it as easy on us as possible by giving plenty of notice and having your paperwork organized and ready.

Hope that my rambling helps out, and would be happy to answer any questions. I'm not looking to get into the business of insuring rally cars, but can try to help anyone that's in a jam...perahps in exchange for letting a rookie co-driver ride along some day  

One thing that works really well is to show up at their office with all your paperwork (license, ownership, etc.), along with copies of your current policies with them. Print the info Martin provided as well to show that it can be done. That way you avoid the phone run-around.

You should be able to fill out an application form, the broker sends it to Facility. Then the underwriter from Facilty calls the broker and either says it can't be done, or asks for more info such as the appraisal/inspection.

Donal, you are absolutely right that this is a huge problem and it's holding competitors back from joining the sport.

CARS has tried very hard for many years to sort this out from many different angles, including approaching the insurance company that provides our rally insurance. They would like to help, but are a motorsport insurance company and are not licensed to provide general road coverage. Several brokers have expressed an interest, but they have never been able to convince any of their companies to take it on. The reason is always the same - rally cars represent far too small a group to be worth their while setting up a special category for and there are no actuarial statistics to base the risk assessment on. However the perceived risk is very high.

Insurance is a provincial issue in Canada , so the solution has to be reached with a company that serves Ontario. There is a broker currently insuring rally cars in Quebec, but the coverage applies only in Quebec. Some Quebec rallyists are working very hard on another company and it sounds promising, but no firm solution has been reached so far. That company thinks it might be able to convince a sister company to do the same in Ontario, but that is only talk at this point.

In the meantime there are three options:

(1) Facility insurance - there is an insurance company in Ontario that is very supportive of insuring rally cars and already cover a number of Ontario competitors. They are willing to be pretty flexible re taking coverage off during the off-season, which will save you some money. Contact me directly for further info - ross at tallpinesrally dot com

(2) RallySprint - we very deliberately created the new RallySprint rules to allow unlicensed, uninsured cars to participate, as long as all of the route runs on closed roads. Several clubs are working on offering events this year that meet those requirements.

(3) Do not report to your insurance company that your car is a competitive rally car. That is fine until you need coverage. IMO the risk is not worth it.

I wish there was a simple solution to the rally car insurance problem, but so far there is not. It is not through lack of effort on the part of RallySport Ontario officials.