Have A Garage For Your Mopar
A sturdy, secure (Lockable!) place to park it at night, and when you're not driving it, means less temptation for thieves.
As for the type of insurance to get, the best type is "Agreed Value," where you and the insurer both agree on what your car is worth, and your car is insured for that amount. That's different from the "book value" that conventional car insurance policies pay, which is the depreciated value of the car's original retail price. Many conventional insurers pay little -to-nothing if a car is over a certain age (i.e. 20 years old)
So, the best bet in your insurance shopping is to find an insurance company that offers collector-car insurance, with "agreed value" coverage--and doesn't have any age or driving-experience restrictions that prevent you from insuring with them. Also, check to see if the insurer will cover your ride if it's in a shop getting work done on it, such as at a body shop. Too often in the past, insurance policies without specific mention of coverage of cars that are "in the shop" have led to additional financial hassles when something goes wrong at the shop, like a fire or burglary.
Another area of coverage to look into is for restoration parts, tools, shop supplies and other items that you may need to work on, or complete, your ride. Also, be sure that your policy allows you enough miles per year to drive your vintage Mopar and be covered if you want to go on long-distance runs like Power Tour, or make a cross-country trip in it to events like Chryslers at Carlisle or Mopars At The Strip in Las Vegas.
We found one specialty-insurance company that isn't afraid to insure Young Guns, or anyone age 25 and under: Hagerty Insurance. "One of the reasons that we even started thinking about getting into this business is that we were a car-collecting family," says company president McKeel Hagerty. "I bought my first car when I was 13, and took a couple years restoring it with my Dad. I wasn't eligible to get it insured with any specialty insurer at that time." He adds that it was a company mission from the earliest days of the company, to accommodate car-collecting families, taking a friendly approach toward writing and selling insurance to customers with a family interest in the collector-car hobby.
And that mission has led them to determine that those customers represented good risks. Hagerty says that while he grew up in a car-restoring family, there were certain things that went along with it. "That included not wrecking the cars, you parked in certain places, and you always had to bring them home clean, which meant that you learned how to wash cars pretty quickly!
Hagerty says that's how their company approaches collector-car insurance--and why they don't have a minimum-age or minimum-driving-experience requirement. "It's not like you get the bicycle-riding family with the random child who MUST have a collector car," he explains. "It tends to follow a pattern, and we think that's a good thing. In fact, I have always been a proponent of that 'pre-history' of always being around cars, and not just understanding how to restore them but also how to treat them and how to care for them. That is often the best evidence of who's going to be a good risk from an insurance standpoint--not just how much money do they make." Hagerty adds that those in "car families" have in interest in the car hobby LONG before they reach the age and driving-experience thresholds of other insurers. As he puts it, "Nobody falls in love with cars at 25--they start at five! When you get old enough, and you're into it, you buy it and you restore it, much like I did."
There's one thing that Hagerty's looks for with prospective new customers, as do most other collector-car insurers: A clean driving record. McKeel Hagerty says that's just one thing they take into consideration. "Statistically, kids are more at risk of having violations on their record, Again, we look at an overall profile, but we look for clean driving records. We look for that family history [and] that total package--or is this just an old car that somebody bought cheaply. If it's just inexpensive daily transportation for a young person, than that's not really for us."
So, how easy is it for Young Guns to get collector-car insurance? In a word: very. "We have a number of distribution partners, like Esurance," Hagerty points out. "There's Progressive, Allstate, Farm Bureau--many of the big insurance outlets now use us as their source for collector-car owners. It works well for all applicants, not just Mopar collectors."
And Hagerty sees the influence of Mopar devotees of all ages on the car hobby. ""The trend of musclecar collecting, and particularly the influence of Mopar performance within the car world has bee just undeniable, and we've embraced it every way we can. It's been really exciting to be a part of."