The Irish Mitsubishi FTO Owners Club

Because of my age, I cannot get quotes cheap enough to be insure on both the family car, and the Fto, so i renewed my insurance with Hibernian.
The reason for this is as follows.

If you have a FULLY COMPREHENSIVE or 3RD PARTY FIRE & THEFT policy In your own name you are entitled to drive other cars.

The Conditions are as follows:

The Car Must be Taxed

The Car Must be Nct'd

The Car must not be in your name

The Car can not be leased/hired or belong to your employer

You cannot drive Jeeps or commercial vehicles on this extension

Car will be covered on 3rd party cover basis (Fire and theft Not Included)

There is NO Litre restriction.

The Car you intend to drive DOES NOT have to be insured by the owner.

There is no age restriction.

As i will not be driving the car that often, as the Fto will be my girlfriends car, as my gift to her this is the way i will be covered to drive it.

In regards to the Fire and theft not being covered, it will be kept in a an old coal store where a neighbour also keeps his car, with big steel gates and heavy duty padlock.. it will be safe as sound..

Just a bit of information about insurance in case your finding it tough during the "recession"

I wrote this for informative reasons and I will not be taking responsability for anyone who doesnt confirm with there insurer the above cover.

My insurance is €2200 fully comp on a 1.4 almera, and because the car is 1.6 i am able to do the ignition test, which i shall be doing in the next week, which will bring it down to 1500-1700 depending on how well i do... in my opinion, this is cheap fully comp insurance for a 20 year old with only 1 years no claims, and i can drive "my girlfriends" fto at the weekends.

You do realise that the FTO will still have to have a valid insurance cert of its own, in order for you to drive it on your policy?

Hi,

I wanted to drive a friends car a while back as i was doing some jobs on my fto. Im with quinn direct.
I told them that the car i wanted to borrow was taxed and nct'ed but not insured by the owner, they said to me that as
long as it was taxed and nct'ed, i would be insured on it as an extension of my own policy.
So i borrowed it no prob,

Richard, just wondering how are u going to tax it if you have no insurance documentation for it? or if it is taxed already how will u renew the tax?

So in replies to you both,
First of all, the fto does not need to be insured as stated above, as long as i bring the cert from my insurance (not the disc, as if i displayed that it would be illegal) i can show any garda that i am covered "quoted from someone at hibernian" I am also aware that failure to have an insurance disc on display can result in a €60 fine, but being realistic, how often will that happen, the almera i am driving didnt have a disc in it until today because i kept forgetting to put it in the car, and i have not been stopped once. i will only be driving the fto maybe once a week, sometimes not at all, so the chances of being stopped are even lower.

The tax issue is grey.. as the last time i taxed a car, i brought my insurance cert and they didnt even want to see it, they just wanted the policy number..
i know that they can see if the car is insured on the system, so i can temp transfer my insurance, and give them the policy number.

Thats the way i have it planned to go, but things dont go to plan, i may eventually have to insure it directly, but it wouldnt be worth another 2 grand just to drive it a few days a month.
So for now, if the above doesnt work, i will resort to leaving the fto in the Coalstore, and fix it up to as close to perfect as i can afford (which could take a long time).

The insurance rules in this country are actually pretty good, but the prices are just ridiculous. If the EU was actually the EU and we were allowed to be insured by any company within the EU, the FTO could be insured in Poland for less than €400 Fully Comp with all the bells and whistles and as far as I'm aware they don't penalise much on age.

I've been using my 3rd party extension the other way around whilst the car is off the road.
Insured on an FTO and driving a 1.4 Almera

I taxed the Almera using my FTO insurance policy number with no problems. If you do it online it'd be even easier I imagine.

Some younger drivers do this to drive their "mothers" Skylines etc.
Seems like a pretty big loophole, of course the car is really the young lads but if its registered in the parents name it would probably be hard to prove. Ownership is 9/10ths of the law perhaps?

Here's Quinns response when I asked them about it:

Quinn wrote:I would like to confirm if your certificate of insurance says so, we will cover you, the policyholder, for your liability to other people while you
are driving any other privately owned vehicle which you do not own or have not hired under a hire-purchase or lease agreement as long as:
Does not belong to you or your employer
Is not hired or leased by you or your employer
Is not a van, or a car van, or a jeep type vehicle
You currently hold a full EU licence
The use of the vehicle is covered on the certificate of insurance
Cover is not provided by any other insurance
You have the owners permission to drive the vehicle
The vehicle is in a roadworthy condition and
You still have your vehicle and it is not been damaged beyond cost
effective repair.

It mentions nothing about NCT (NCT is not a measure of roadworthiness according to NCTS ) or Tax, if you think about you're still insured in your car if it has no tax/nct its just the Gardaí don't like it. (On most policies anyway)

My insurance cert says most of that, but it also says the car must not be stolen... errrr, nah you dont say! haha

It is a fairly hand loop hole though. In fairness, if i people that use it could find an insurance company that would insure them to drive the car say 100 miles a week/ just on weekends (like some classic insurance companys do) they would insure it because it would be affordable, especially if they would count your NCB on the second car. Why they dont in the first place is beyond me!!

I, like gfalls was always lead to believe that the other car had to be insured also. Plus to tax a car you need the cars insurance details in order to fill in the forms.

If its this easy, can i insure a fiesta for €200 and not insure my integra and just tax and n.c.t it?? My insurance is only €750 full comp so im quite happy with it but still...... id like to sane 500 notes!

I would think that the 'family' car would have to be off the road and that the insurance on the f.t.o is a swap and that you cannot drive both at the same time?? If you can drive them both without swapping then why in fooks name did i not have a Skyline when I was 18 along with my civic

Also you ARE going to be stopped a lot more in an f.t.o compared to an Almera! Comes with the territory!

Ahh yes i know i will be stopped more, but i will be driving it a lot less than the almera ...
And some insurance company's do require the car to be insured, but if you call up hibernian aviva and ask about their 3rd party extension, you will understand it really is that easy... and taxing it is easy too, just swap over insurance for an hour while u tax it and just use the same policy number, or dont even swap the insurance at all, they will still accept it, they just need to fill in the blanks!! haha... well im sorry to tell yuo, you prob could have been driving a liner!

I have been trying to see how this will work, if not for any other reason then to use for myself, but I really can't see it coming off, sorry to disagree Richard but what the insurance company is describing to you is not an extension its a temporary swap, no matter how its worded, at the end of the day, its something thats intended for a person getting a car from a garage for a day or two while theirs is in there or something like that. It would mean that every time you want to take the FTO out you have to swap the insurance, and back to the Almera, and back to the FTO, and back to the Almera, and so on. Wouldn't be long before alarm bells start going off.
Now maybe you will get away with it for a while, I don't know, but to tax it, it needs its own insurance policy. When the details are entered on the system, the car that the cert will be printed for is an Almera, (Provided thats the one you are using as the other car), not the FTO, the policy is still under the Almera, the details are all for the Almera. Driving around with no disc and saying how many times will I get stopped isn't a good way of thinking, it doesn't matter how many times you get stopped cause the likelihood is that it will be once, and once only, and then the car will be impounded. The other thing is what happens in the event of an accident, (touch wood there would not be one but just in case), the insurance company comes along, sees how the insurance was being swapped and cops whats going on, realises the car is not insured itself or comes up with some jargon as insurance companies do to try to get out of paying for stuff, and suddenly you're left standing with no insurance under your belt and a nice hefty figure to fix the car.
But look, its you're risk, you believe it will work, I hope for you're own sake it will and that you'll get away with it, but I for one will be keeping my own insurance policy on my FTO cause I believe the risk is to much.

Yes i understand your doubt, but i wouldnt need to swap the insurance over, as it stands right now, if i anybody had a car e.g. my mates glanza, that he isnt insured on but has tax and nct and he asked me to drive it to a garage, i am insured on that car 3rd party. if the insurance is swapped over for a day i can tax the car using that policy number as it will show up on the system as insured. So there wont be any swapping here and there whenever i want to driv it, all i have to do is go outside and hop in and drive. no complications involved. as i said lads, call hibernian and ask about their extension policy.

Driving without proper insurance is asking for trouble..

it is proper insurance..

richardc9052 wrote:it is proper insurance..

Quick ways to find out..

1. Drive about for a bit, make sure to get yourself close to a garda car with one of those licenseplate reader thingies.. get stopped and explain to the garda - see if it\s a nice pleasant conversation or not.

2. Ring your insurance and explain to the exactly what you're doing and ask them if that is how they intended the policy to be used.

Let me know how it works out for you...

Using my third party extension cover to drive my girlfriends car once or twice a week is not against my Insurance policy.

I must have misread..that's not what I understood..sorry.

What is being discussed here is a grey area that many's a lad has disussed in the past without ever receiving a definitive answer. It's like an insurance urban legend. Insure a micra -drive a ferrari -almost sounds too good to be true..........
The key seems to be whether the vehicle in question has to be otherwise insured or not. The requirment for it to be otherwise insured effectively prevents this practice. However, what good, or what is the point of your third party extension if it does not actaully cover you to drive someone elses car (without conditions). I mean why should a car have to be covered under two policies -either your insurance covers it, or it doesn't? And if it doesn't then it isn't worth the paper it's written on. I don't have the definitive answer -just expressing an opinion.

In order to tax the vehicle in question it needs to be insured at the time of renewal (that is the official line).So you need to insure it properly at least for a while. Of course you could do it online and just lie, making up insurance details in order to get the tax disc, this is the data that feeds into the NPR system,I assume, so ok on that front (I do not advise or condone this behaviour, I'm sure you'd be breaking some kind of law, providing misleading information, etc).
That get's you a tax disc. Next you will ideally need an insurance disc -at least to keep the fuzz off your back. tranfer cover to the FTO, get a cert, transfer back. Most insurers will ask for the disc back -but I doubt they would actually follow it up if you don't return the disc. So visually the discs would be in order.

Remember, you are required to be insured -not sure if we have ticked that box or not, but you are also legally required to show a valid up to date insurance disc -having one that was valid (until you swapped cover and kept the disc, doesn't really cut it -technically at least).

Whatever about getting through check points uncheacked. The real issue arises in the event of a claim. If your GF legally owns the car, but had never actaully insured it -(at least for any meaningful length of time), and you are teh only driver, any insurance company is unlikely to pay out.

Of heard of young people driving cars under their parents name. The car legally belonged to the parents, but the real owner was the son/ daughter. In the event of an accident, the loss adjustor/ assessor, just makes some casual enquiries to neighbours etc about who owns and drives the car. Result -no pay out.

Insurance companies, now more so than ever will be looking to minimise their claim pay outs, give them the slightest opportunity and they will take it.

My suggestion would be ditch the Almera.

The one major flaw with this is the fact it is 3RD PARTY ONLY,you are running the risk of, if the car is stolen its gone forever,nothing but a memory and at that point wasted time on your pride and joy. Its like the old trick of insuring the car until you get the cert and then cancelling your policy. You have a disc and a piece of paper to show to the cops,none of which are any benefit if something goes wrong.

Also as far as I know its a court appearance for not displaying an insurance disc. Which will be the case in your FTO.

That's exactly it.

It's very easy to insure a Micra and drive a car worth less than €60,000 (according to my policy) but if the other car gets damaged by me or set on fire or stolen then it's gone gone gone. Your insurance policy by its very nature covers the vehicle under the policy for whatever you agree. Whether it's 3rd party, fire, theft or comp. then that's what you agree. 3RD Party cover on another vehicle DOES NOT cover the vehicle at all...in any way. It covers you in the event you run over a village of people and break all their houses (up to a value of €30,000,000 I think)

My Punto was insured by my Mum in her name and I drove it as a named driver. I used to drive her and my Dad's car because I was over 21 and they allowed me to, but if I crashed my Dad's Merc then I would have to foot the bill for any damage to his car and the policy pays out the damages to 3RD parties.

Insurance companies are run by some very clever people and they know exactly how to make money on a risk.