American Collectors Insurance is excellent for kit cars
Hi everybody.
Please let me be the third person thus far in the discussion to recommend:
American Collectors Insurance
I used to have my Sterling through State Farm. Interestingly, when I went to insure my Cimbria, they told me they can't insure "that type of car." I told them that I thought this was kind of curious seeing as how they were already insuring and almost identical sister car to this for me.
They agree. And they dropped the Sterling. *explitive rant*
Anway, after a few minutes of panic and a few more minutes of research, I found a link on Geiko's site that led me to American Collectors Insurance. And the rest is history.
So far, there is nothing at all that I don't like about this insurance. They gave me a quote via email within a few hours. They used "agreed value" just like we need. They weren't expensive. And best of all, they didn't look at me like I had three heads when I told them I had a kit car. Instead they said, "Cool! What kind?" And for that alone I will probably use them for every project I ever need to insure. (I knew that things were good when they had choices like "Kit Car" and "Street Rod" and "Specially Constructed" in their pull-down menus. Yes!!)
They seem to have a few different policy choices, but I did notice two quirks to their underwriting. First, they do prefer to write the policy as a show car that is only driven a certain number of miles per year. Initially that made me nervous. But when it came down to it, they asked me how many miles per years I wanted and adjusted the policy accordingly. One of their defaults was for 5000 miles per year, which will be MORE than adequate for me. (Plus, I figure that if I somehow freakishly get to my limit, heck, I'll just switch to the other car, right?)
The other quirk was that they were much more focused on where I was garaging the car than what type of car it was. They asked me several times about whether it was in a locked garage, whether the garage was shared, whether there were security guards (seriously), etc. But again, when it came down to it, they merely tagged on a little to the premium because my cars are not guarded by a swat team. (In other words, it is more a case of them providing a discount to those who have unusually secure locations, if I'm understanding it correctly.)
Anyway, I can strongly endorse this company. They immediately had a product for me -- for all of us -- and plus, they seem like a smaller, specialized company and have competently, quickly answered every email and phone call. I give them two thumbs up. *thumbs up**thumbs up*
Here is a copy of my general policy (with some info blocked out). Feel free to use it for comparison. Insurance isn't always about finding the one that's the very cheapest. These guys were among the least expensive. But more importantly, they seem to "get it" regarding our cars. You don't have to beg them for coverage. I'll gladly pay a tad more per year for that attitude.
Below is my coverage. It would be even less expensive if I just hired an armed guard! (Note that the total at the bottom is for BOTH of my insured kits.)
Please note that I have no financial gain in this endorsement. When a company does something right for our hobby, I simply want to scream it from the rooftops.