I’m looking for a car for my daughter and was surprised at some of the seemingly random variations in liability costs in different vehicles or even the same vehicles over different years. For example, a 96 Pathfinder might be $300 but a 2002 Pathfinder is $500. So even though they are similar cars, the costs are very different. Keep in mind, this is the cost for liability, not collision. I fully understand why collision would be different, but I don’t fully understand why the liability would be so much greater in a newer car.
What I’ve had to do is keep calling my insurance agent for each specific car to see what the rates would be. That’s a hassle to do over the phone each time for each car I find. I’ve also used some of the online auto insurance quote websites, but that’s a pain since I have to go through all the initial config screens.
What I really want is a website where I can enter the specific make/model/year and get an idea of what the relative liability would be. Something like a scale from 1-100 where I can see that the 96 Pathfinder is at 40 on the scale and the 2002 is at 60. That would save me a lot of time so I could easily dismiss the cars with high liability costs.