I'm probably jinxing myself by bringing this up, but I'm curious what others are doing for insurance. There are plenty of people who have more money wrapped up in their cars than they'd like to admit, myself included.

I'm just on generic insurance right now with extra coverage for $5000 in aftermarket modifications (the max Progressive allows). I just ran through Hagerty's "classic car" rigmarole online and was told they couldn't offer coverage. I'm not sure if calling in would be more fruitful, but that's beside the point.

I haven't looked super hard, but casual searches for "agreed value insurance" gets a lot of explanations of what it is, but doesn't come up with many people trying to sell me insurance (which is wild to me considering how aggressive insurance agencies are). Are most of you guys on something like that? Would you plan to buy the car back and part it out or swap stuff over to a new shell? Are there too many variables here to say?

Just figured I'd ask and see what people are doing. I've never been in a wreck or dealt with insurance claims, so my understanding here isn't the greatest.

 

Since my Flex is my daily driver I was able to register my NA Miata as collector's car and use Hagerty's Collector Car insurance. I should probably increase the value though because I currently just have it set for the original purchase price and not with all of the modifications I've been throwing into it...

 

In addition to Hagerty, the two other "unusual" car insurance companies I know of are Grundy and Lockton. My experience (mostly with off-track "storage/transport/paddock" insurance for the M3, which is a non-street legal race car) was that Hagerty is super picky about a ton of little details and won't write policies unless you tick all the boxes, whereas Lockton will just charge you more if you don't get everything perfect.

--Ian

 

My NA does indeed have more money in it than I'd like to admit. Let's just say I've roughly done the math on it and could probably have a basically brand new Miata if I count it all. That said, much of that is revisions and I don't count it. But still, it's an easy 20k+ ride.

Even so, I'm a minimum coverage guy. I've had the car long enough (20+ years) than I've saved enough on insurance on this thing to.. easily replace the shell with a cleaner one. The way I see it, if I were in an accident most of the nice parts would probably survive if I did, and I'd re shell it into a nicer car. Theft or fire on the other hand would be devastating, but I keep a fire extinguisher in the car and I'm pretty OCD about leaving it anywhere.

I also live in the mountains and only drive it on weekends, to the track, and occasionally to work. So I understand the risks.

Not that this is helpful to your post, but figured I'd chime in!

 

I have an “agreed upon value” through Erie. Basically collectors car insurance. Just for 9900 though. The agent said they would more than likely have to inspect it if I went higher than 10k. There is definitely way more than that in it though. But I just haven’t bothered to get it updated since I started the policy.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I suppose Haggerty likely declined me because I put that I drive the car about 7K miles a year, which I do. I suppose they consider that more of daily driver than "classic car".

Fire, I figure I'm in a similar ballpark to you. Rough math says I'd probably want $20k or so if I had to buy another car and all the parts new, not including my labor.

Ian, I might have to look into Lockton. I did come across them but it looked like they were UK based so I didn't dive in too deep.

 

Hagerty wouldn’t write me a policy because I don’t park the car in the garage 100% of the time. I could lie about this, but it is more likely that something would happen while it’s parked outside, and I’d be SOL if it did.

I should look into the sort of insurance Ian has on his race car for parking/storage/transport, the track car is rather dollar-intensive.

For the street Miata, I take my chances. The mods to it are almost entirely removable in a weekend of wrenching. If I ever get it finished/painted and all that it’ll be a different story.

The 928 is probably worth just as much in early or 78-only parts as it is as a car, for now. Gotta get that project back on the front burner.

 

https://locktonmotorsports.com/off-track/

And yeah, the "must be stored in a locked garage" clause is why I don't have Hagerty coverage, it applies even for race cars. Mine is stored in the trailer in the side yard of my house behind a locked gate, but that's not good enough for Hagerty (it is for Lockton).

--Ian

 

My car is stored in a garage, but I'm still assuming the high annual mileage is why Hagerty wouldn't work with me. Maybe it's a nightmare from the insurance point of view, but if someone came out with a good policy for car enthusiasts I could see them gaining a good number of customers. Plus if I'm moving to an insurance company for the project car I'd be insuring my other cars with that same company for simplicity sake (although on a different style plan).

 

I have our track NA covered with Grundy on a stated value policy, because I knew that with normal insurance there was no way that I would be reimbursed anywhere near the actual value of the car if I had a claim. Their requirements are that it not be a daily driver (you have to have another car that is a daily), and it must be garaged. There is no mileage limit. Of course, it doesn't cover anything on-track. I was primarily worried about theft and having some idiot run into me on the very limited times I drive it on the street, and Grundy covers that at a pretty reasonable price. I have three cars on my Grundy policy with a total insured value of $65k and my policy for 2026 is $658.

If my NA wasn't licensed, I would probably do the Lockton 'off-track' policy.

 

My RGM is road registered and my 'second car' still the insured value is way short of what it owes me. So my remedy is ensuring that I have salvage rights as that maybe gives me an opportunity to top up my payout.

 

I have declared value insurance on my 'toy' vehicles thru american modern. I initially asked my normal insurance people about it after getting an ad about it, and they basically acted as an agent and forwarded my info to american modern. They are very easy to deal with. Lots of coverage for super cheap. I have the lowest annual mileage and I barely use 1/4 of it. (i.e. I fill my miata gas tank avg 2x/year).

Note, there's lots of options you can choose, like where it's parked, or how many miles, etc. I noticed one year that my jeep was listed as able to be driven to work but the miata wasn't? Yeah underwriting is weird like that and didn't realize that was something to be concerned with. I wanted to be able to drive the miata to work so I called and asked how much to add that coverage to the miata...$7/year.