Strange Thing Insurance Pricing on Fiesta ST’s

[Dpro]

So ya I wrote that title because some of you may know I bought a GR Corolla almost two weeks ago. I did not sell my FiST nor did I have plans on selling it. The jury is the still out .I do love the little rocket.

I have just discovered that to insure my FiST is more expensive than cars it’s age and new cars as well , For many reason I add. My Premium for the FiST is more than my brand new GRC which is pretty much twice the price of my FiST when I bought that new.

I decided to post this thread to inform those that might not be aware. I was definitely not aware. . When I found out I talked to my nusurance and also researched why online .
these factors are contributing to this
car no longer being made … leading too
parts not being available
parts going up in price

And the big one the Ford Fiesta now rates officially as the most deaths and crashes per millions for any sub compact car per the IIHS website which the Insurance industry uses along with the above other factors for rating a car insurance premium.

I have to admit I was kinda bummed about this and shocked. The price difference in premiums is literally 20-25% more for the older used car. Now depending on were you live that may not be too bad but in higher cost insurance areas it becomes a lot of extra cash.

 

[WannabeST]

And the big one the Ford Fiesta now rates officially as the most deaths and crashes per millions for any sub compact car per the IIHS website which the Insurance industry uses along with the above other factors for rating a car insurance premium.

I agree. This is probably the biggest reason why the prices are so inflated.

the insurance pricing on my SE isn’t too bad. $98 a month for full coverage with nationwide.

 

[Dpro]

I agree. This is probably the biggest reason why the prices are so inflated.

the insurance pricing on my SE isn’t too bad. $98 a month for full coverage with nationwide.

Ya my FiST with full coverage 100/300 is $2k a year which is absolutely silly as it was only $400 more than that new 6 years ago and it went down for several years . It did jump recently because California allowed insurance companies to raise their prices just recently , first time since pre covid. Most insurers jack their prices 30%
Of course I pay for living in LA . My GRC is literally $400 less a year for the same coverage🤣 It really feels like it makes no sense except by statistics.

 

[gtx3076]

The insurance on my mazdaspeed 3 was so cheap because it was uncommon enough it got lumped in with mazda 3's. The maintenance needed to maintain the disi motor made up the difference, though.

 

[M-Sport fan]

Are you certain that they know (or have caught on yet) to the fact that the GR is a very high performance variant of a standard, boring, pedestrian (and deemed as totally 'safe' by them) Corolla??

Usually any high(er) performance model instantaneously gets the jacked up premiums attached to it (new OR used).

 

[Mega ST]

The base Fiesta is a lot of new drivers 1st car hense the high accident total loss numbers. The ST gets thrown in the heap even tho I would think most of the people that own them are not new drivers.

 

[thecman02]

I think it makes sense. Their isn't enough data for the insurance company to know how bad repair costs are going to end up being and their isn't a ton of ""peasant boy racer"" types going out and screwing up the GRS yet because the price to entry weeds out. My friends growing up with Lancer Evo's had dramatic insurance price swings. They were very reasonable for the first 4 years. They started to become affordable for the riff raff and next thing you know they are getting totalled/in accidents left and right. I remember Evo's being substanially less than the lower model WRX actually.

 

[Dpro]

I think it makes sense. Their isn't enough data for the insurance company to know how bad repair costs are going to end up being and their isn't a ton of ""peasant boy racer"" types going out and screwing up the GRS yet because the price to entry weeds out. My friends growing up with Lancer Evo's had dramatic insurance price swings. They were very reasonable for the first 4 years. They started to become affordable for the riff raff and next thing you know they are getting totalled/in accidents left and right. I remember Evo's being substanially less than the lower model WRX actually.

This is an interesting take. certainly there will not be peasant boy racers driving the cars for awhile . The cost of entry eliminates that. I will say the Corolla model itself I believe comes in just under the top cars for least accidents. So the model is already on the opposite part of the spectrum and I should add those statistics are actually not just accidents but deaths.

As for the theory insurance companies might not have figured it out yet? Or will jack. it up because sport or performance?
As Mega said non ST Fiestas attract a lot of new young drivers.
As for the Grolla
The cars have been on the market for a year and a half now enough time for Insurance companies to know. My Insurance even actually had this years trim choices aka Core/Premium/Circuit..

Oh and let’s just cut to the chase the Fiesta uses a plastic core support not steel whearas all Corollas have steel core supports. In fact I tripped on that when I put my Mountune rad in and realized if was a plastic piece using the radiator itself as partof the structural integrity . Ya your front end is that unprotected. Most likely it was done for engineering choices for weight savings. You cannot get around it though, cars with full metal core supports have a seriously more boxed out structure in front of the cabin.

 

[WannabeST]

The base Fiesta is a lot of new drivers 1st car hense the high accident total loss numbers. The ST gets thrown in the heap even tho I would think most of the people that own them are not new drivers.

I agree, last time we got really bad rain here there was a base fiesta on its roof and I've seen 2 other ones crashed locally. Not even on the news, just crashes I stumble upon

 

[Dpro]

Thinking about it I would sell my FIST if someone gave me 14k for the current build with parts.I know Blasphemy! 😵

 

[Intuit]

What I've learned over the decades is, insurance will literally ALWAYS have an excuse to charge whatever the hell they want. I was done hearing the excuses some fifteen years ago when I realized they could justify charging a higher PRICE (not "rate") for 98% of the driving and non-driving population. Switch to liability only. You'll still see high prices. It isn't that the car is older and out of production, it's that the car is "older" has a lower resale value and is therefore likely paid off. F*** what they say. May parents are long retired seniors that barely go anywhere and when I took over some of their billing I found out they were paying insane prices simply because that's what they were always used to paying. The reality is, their algorithms have determined that the typical Fiesta ST owner has more disposable cash which means, they'll be willing to tolerate more in payments. The "factors" they're more interested in, is your income, profession, marriage status, credit rating and other demographic information that has jack to do with whether or not you'll file a claim or have a claim filed against you. I have never filed a claim or had a claim filed against me but talking to a coworker, found out he was being charged way less and had a f***ing DUI on his record.

 

[Dpro]

This is copied and pasted from a guy who is the on GR Corolla forum as I also posted a thread over there about the comical fact of this thread i.e FiST costing more to insure than a brand new car. I repost this because it offers a lot of insight how the insurance companies do things and why it also shows why if you own a FiST now no matter where you are you kinda get hosed on Insurance even if you think it’s cheap. It’s more than other comparable cars.
I should add I still love my FiST and really would rather not sell it but for what I have to pay for Insurance on it living where I live there is a big ? At this point.
…………………………

“
Source: I worked as an underwriter + tech liaison in the high risk division of one of the biggest
insurance companies in the US for almost 6 years. Due to the nature of what I was doing I learned the entire underwriting process and worked directly with auto underwriters for much of that time in addition to P&C. So I am at least, a little educated on the industry. This is not intended to be a full explanation on how risk is calculated and how policies are written so if you want to get into a pedantic "yeah, but" argument go get riled up on someone else.

Why did I call it dangerous? The Fiesta ST is, in insurance terms, a dangerous platform. Yes, absolutely this was the case. But not physical danger. Dangerous as in, high risk for costing the insurer money.

Why is this true? The highest value of at fault claims, large claims, property and liability claims for the Fiesta during it's production run were for the Fiesta ST by quite a bit.. I do not recall the actual numbers as it was a few years ago before I got the hell out of the insurance industry and I was not about to save data like that on my personal machines.

Again, I am not referring in any way to the actual physical safety of the Fiesta platform nor am I debating if it was a well built car, it was absolutely a great platform for a long time. I am referring only to the risk related to writing a policy on the ST itself. Why do I even know this? In 2018 I was debating the FiST vs FoST for months before finally settling on the Focus. So, due to my job at the time, I had access to information like this. Being a gigantic nerd, I researched it. Who knew it would come up on a random car forum shortly after getting rid of that Focus.

(Unrelated Note: I should have bought the FiST, got the Focus because it was bigger and the wife didn't like how small the Fiesta m,y buddy had was. But she also hated the Focus, oh well. The first thing she said when she sat in the GRC was literally " I never liked the focus". Not sure I will ever truly forgive ford for discontinuing the FiST/FoST+RS in the US. At some point, there will be a FiST project in the garage.)

The Ford performance modding community and modding communities in general for popular brands are a well known factor for good auto underwriters. Claims agent, phone customer service/sales people, sales people in the small branches etc, they don't know much about anything. However, it is an underwriters job to understand the industry they write policies for. They do absolutely take things like this into account. There has been a demonstrable lag time when a new "performance" platform or model launches before enough historical claim data is available that they are treated mostly like the existing models. However, in my experience 3-4 (ish) model years in, that data tends to ramp the policy cost if the claim data supports it, which in cars like these, usually happens. Because let's be honest, it is impossible to behave yourself in a car as fun as either a FiST or a GRC.

The 240sx stopped production in '98, my 250+hp death trap '97 civic hatchback cost me like 18$/month to insure in the late 90s/early 2000s. That no longer really matters because the rules are no longer the same. While slow to adapt (so.. god damn slow), the insurance industry did adapt to the new data being tracked and made available to take a lot more into account than they used to. Simply put, because there is more information immediately available and so much more technology behind how insurance is written the rules we once operated under, no longer apply. We got away with way more back then than we do now. That's not a debatable fact, as much as everyone who was doing gearhead things w/ cars in those days and before would prefer it was.

It's not the mods themselves that impact policy cost as it is the existence of huge, verifiable modding communities and their inferred impact on at fault claims. Acting like Ford does not have an absolutely massive modding community is silly. Especially when talking about one of the most adaptable littler rippers that ever existed.

FiST facts: The car is discontinued, oem parts become harder to find over time and thus, more expensive. This is not incorrect. It has less safety features than the GRC, also not wrong.

It would absolutely not shock me to see GRC premiums go up at least marginally beyond normal insurance company greed somewhere around mid model year 3 as policies start to renew during that cycle.

TLDR: Auto Insurance providers are predatory shitlords and absolutely hold a car being a performance version of a normal car against us, once they remove head from collective ass and realize it exists after a few years.”

 

[Capri to ST]

This is copied and pasted from a guy who is the on GR Corolla forum as I also posted a thread over there about the comical fact of this thread i.e FiST costing more to insure than a brand new car. I repost this because it offers a lot of insight how the insurance companies do things and why it also shows why if you own a FiST now no matter where you are you kinda get hosed on Insurance even if you think it’s cheap. It’s more than other comparable cars.
I should add I still love my FiST and really would rather not sell it but for what I have to pay for Insurance on it living where I live there is a big ? At this point.
…………………………

“
Source: I worked as an underwriter + tech liaison in the high risk division of one of the biggest
insurance companies in the US for almost 6 years. Due to the nature of what I was doing I learned the entire underwriting process and worked directly with auto underwriters for much of that time in addition to P&C. So I am at least, a little educated on the industry. This is not intended to be a full explanation on how risk is calculated and how policies are written so if you want to get into a pedantic "yeah, but" argument go get riled up on someone else.

Why did I call it dangerous? The Fiesta ST is, in insurance terms, a dangerous platform. Yes, absolutely this was the case. But not physical danger. Dangerous as in, high risk for costing the insurer money.

Why is this true? The highest value of at fault claims, large claims, property and liability claims for the Fiesta during it's production run were for the Fiesta ST by quite a bit.. I do not recall the actual numbers as it was a few years ago before I got the hell out of the insurance industry and I was not about to save data like that on my personal machines.

Again, I am not referring in any way to the actual physical safety of the Fiesta platform nor am I debating if it was a well built car, it was absolutely a great platform for a long time. I am referring only to the risk related to writing a policy on the ST itself. Why do I even know this? In 2018 I was debating the FiST vs FoST for months before finally settling on the Focus. So, due to my job at the time, I had access to information like this. Being a gigantic nerd, I researched it. Who knew it would come up on a random car forum shortly after getting rid of that Focus.

(Unrelated Note: I should have bought the FiST, got the Focus because it was bigger and the wife didn't like how small the Fiesta m,y buddy had was. But she also hated the Focus, oh well. The first thing she said when she sat in the GRC was literally " I never liked the focus". Not sure I will ever truly forgive ford for discontinuing the FiST/FoST+RS in the US. At some point, there will be a FiST project in the garage.)

The Ford performance modding community and modding communities in general for popular brands are a well known factor for good auto underwriters. Claims agent, phone customer service/sales people, sales people in the small branches etc, they don't know much about anything. However, it is an underwriters job to understand the industry they write policies for. They do absolutely take things like this into account. There has been a demonstrable lag time when a new "performance" platform or model launches before enough historical claim data is available that they are treated mostly like the existing models. However, in my experience 3-4 (ish) model years in, that data tends to ramp the policy cost if the claim data supports it, which in cars like these, usually happens. Because let's be honest, it is impossible to behave yourself in a car as fun as either a FiST or a GRC.

The 240sx stopped production in '98, my 250+hp death trap '97 civic hatchback cost me like 18$/month to insure in the late 90s/early 2000s. That no longer really matters because the rules are no longer the same. While slow to adapt (so.. god damn slow), the insurance industry did adapt to the new data being tracked and made available to take a lot more into account than they used to. Simply put, because there is more information immediately available and so much more technology behind how insurance is written the rules we once operated under, no longer apply. We got away with way more back then than we do now. That's not a debatable fact, as much as everyone who was doing gearhead things w/ cars in those days and before would prefer it was.

It's not the mods themselves that impact policy cost as it is the existence of huge, verifiable modding communities and their inferred impact on at fault claims. Acting like Ford does not have an absolutely massive modding community is silly. Especially when talking about one of the most adaptable littler rippers that ever existed.

FiST facts: The car is discontinued, oem parts become harder to find over time and thus, more expensive. This is not incorrect. It has less safety features than the GRC, also not wrong.

It would absolutely not shock me to see GRC premiums go up at least marginally beyond normal insurance company greed somewhere around mid model year 3 as policies start to renew during that cycle.

TLDR: Auto Insurance providers are predatory shitlords and absolutely hold a car being a performance version of a normal car against us, once they remove head from collective ass and realize it exists after a few years.”

Thanks for posting, that was very interesting and revealing.

 

[Dialcaliper]

This is copied and pasted from a guy who is the on GR Corolla forum as I also posted a thread over there about the comical fact of this thread i.e FiST costing more to insure than a brand new car. I repost this because it offers a lot of insight how the insurance companies do things and why it also shows why if you own a FiST now no matter where you are you kinda get hosed on Insurance even if you think it’s cheap. It’s more than other comparable cars.
I should add I still love my FiST and really would rather not sell it but for what I have to pay for Insurance on it living where I live there is a big ? At this point.
…………………………

“
Source: I worked as an underwriter + tech liaison in the high risk division of one of the biggest
insurance companies in the US for almost 6 years. Due to the nature of what I was doing I learned the entire underwriting process and worked directly with auto underwriters for much of that time in addition to P&C. So I am at least, a little educated on the industry. This is not intended to be a full explanation on how risk is calculated and how policies are written so if you want to get into a pedantic "yeah, but" argument go get riled up on someone else.

Why did I call it dangerous? The Fiesta ST is, in insurance terms, a dangerous platform. Yes, absolutely this was the case. But not physical danger. Dangerous as in, high risk for costing the insurer money.

Why is this true? The highest value of at fault claims, large claims, property and liability claims for the Fiesta during it's production run were for the Fiesta ST by quite a bit.. I do not recall the actual numbers as it was a few years ago before I got the hell out of the insurance industry and I was not about to save data like that on my personal machines.

Again, I am not referring in any way to the actual physical safety of the Fiesta platform nor am I debating if it was a well built car, it was absolutely a great platform for a long time. I am referring only to the risk related to writing a policy on the ST itself. Why do I even know this? In 2018 I was debating the FiST vs FoST for months before finally settling on the Focus. So, due to my job at the time, I had access to information like this. Being a gigantic nerd, I researched it. Who knew it would come up on a random car forum shortly after getting rid of that Focus.

(Unrelated Note: I should have bought the FiST, got the Focus because it was bigger and the wife didn't like how small the Fiesta m,y buddy had was. But she also hated the Focus, oh well. The first thing she said when she sat in the GRC was literally " I never liked the focus". Not sure I will ever truly forgive ford for discontinuing the FiST/FoST+RS in the US. At some point, there will be a FiST project in the garage.)

The Ford performance modding community and modding communities in general for popular brands are a well known factor for good auto underwriters. Claims agent, phone customer service/sales people, sales people in the small branches etc, they don't know much about anything. However, it is an underwriters job to understand the industry they write policies for. They do absolutely take things like this into account. There has been a demonstrable lag time when a new "performance" platform or model launches before enough historical claim data is available that they are treated mostly like the existing models. However, in my experience 3-4 (ish) model years in, that data tends to ramp the policy cost if the claim data supports it, which in cars like these, usually happens. Because let's be honest, it is impossible to behave yourself in a car as fun as either a FiST or a GRC.

The 240sx stopped production in '98, my 250+hp death trap '97 civic hatchback cost me like 18$/month to insure in the late 90s/early 2000s. That no longer really matters because the rules are no longer the same. While slow to adapt (so.. god damn slow), the insurance industry did adapt to the new data being tracked and made available to take a lot more into account than they used to. Simply put, because there is more information immediately available and so much more technology behind how insurance is written the rules we once operated under, no longer apply. We got away with way more back then than we do now. That's not a debatable fact, as much as everyone who was doing gearhead things w/ cars in those days and before would prefer it was.

It's not the mods themselves that impact policy cost as it is the existence of huge, verifiable modding communities and their inferred impact on at fault claims. Acting like Ford does not have an absolutely massive modding community is silly. Especially when talking about one of the most adaptable littler rippers that ever existed.

FiST facts: The car is discontinued, oem parts become harder to find over time and thus, more expensive. This is not incorrect. It has less safety features than the GRC, also not wrong.

It would absolutely not shock me to see GRC premiums go up at least marginally beyond normal insurance company greed somewhere around mid model year 3 as policies start to renew during that cycle.

TLDR: Auto Insurance providers are predatory shitlords and absolutely hold a car being a performance version of a normal car against us, once they remove head from collective ass and realize it exists after a few years.”

Very informative, thanks for posting. The only thing I disagree with is that the initial time lag of raising premiums has anything to do with “ignorance” or lack of greed regarding performance models, and everything to do with insurance companies with big pockets being big fat targets for class action lawyers.

Being accused of “gouging” consumers without those 3-4 years of established data to point to is simply painting a bullseye on yourself that attracts the flies like a pile of dung. Ignoring for a moment that the whole insurance industry is an already a big for-profit racket.

 

[Dpro]

Very informative, thanks for posting. The only thing I disagree with is that the initial time lag of raising premiums has anything to do with “ignorance” or lack of greed regarding performance models, and everything to do with insurance companies with big pockets being big fat targets for class action lawyers.

Being accused of “gouging” consumers without those 3-4 years of established data to point to is simply painting a bullseye on yourself that attracts the flies like a pile of dung. Ignoring for a moment that the whole insurance industry is an already a big for-profit racket.

First off he is no longer in that business. He is only pointing out that Insurance companies tend to rip off customers even without data. I can actually attest to this because of the way they choose to rate. I am a good driver I have no tickets and no at fault accidents . Yet because of the neighborhood I live in that has a fair amount of traffic and is in the City of Los Angeles I pay nearly three times the amount my friend pays for equal coverage both for FiST’s and he is in San Pedro which actually falls under the City of LA jurisdiction as well.

Though they do raise premiums according to accident data and there is a time lag which makes a company possible ignorant of what according to their practices should be proper rates. Does it make it fair see my previous comment.

I do know I am now completely torn about my FiST I love it but 2k a year for full coverage for a 6 year old car that has a value of roughly 14-15k max and going down rapidly does not make a lot of sense.

My only option is to move it to Liability only and suck it up if I happen to crash it. Is that likely not really is always an outlier in the equation yes. Though at 2k a year with a 1k deductible to keep the rates at that price equates to possible cash out lay of 3k in a single year before repairs.

Of course if I moved it to Liability only and drove it only occasionally as a back up vehicle I could hang onto to it but at that point it starts falling into the do I drive it enough to make it worth still owning it. If I had more room ya I could park it as part of my collection.

Thing is I already own a car that qualifies as a garage queen due to rarity and value and yes that car is being prepped for sale due to my use or lose it way of doing things.

 

[SVTBob]

Dpro, I have been a member here for only a few weeks (just bought a basically stock ‘19) but already value your threads/feedback. But I totally agree and sympathize with your position. I just insured my FiST and was only charged $700 for the year but I live in a small city in AZ and was amazed at how cheaper the insurance was when I retired here from Huntington Beach. I have the same attitude toward my garage queen GT350, have been seriously thinking of selling it even though I love it, think it is the most balanced sports car I have ever owned.

 

[Intuit]

...... insurance companies with big pockets being big fat targets for class action lawyers............. .

It's supposed to be illegal for them to collude and price fix. But you go to pretty much any auto insurance carrier and they all some how manage come up with very very very, very similar prices. ONE division of ONE insurance company took in 4 BILLION moola in just TWO months. The only reason I was able to figure that out is they made a mistake and gave a tad too much info when boasting about "giving" back $600 million to customers during a COVID year; supposedly 15% of what they took in for April and May of that year. (I suspect it was only the consumer protections reforms act of 2008 that prompted that into existence.) The insurance companies ain't sdubid. They know how to grease law makers' pockets so their interests are not only heard, but acted upon. It's the reason auto insurance fraud can share similar penalties to violent crime. Speaking in general, it's also the reason law makers have been busted submitting lobbyist bills, verbatim. Besides auto insurance, the banking industry has pockets fat enough, to pull this off.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2024/05/31/777621.htm
<< ....... HB 337, sponsored by Rep. Jack McFarland, prevents insurers from being named initially in lawsuits involving an injured person in a car wreck. Known as the Direct Action bill, the law would keep plaintiff attorneys from knowing how much liability insurance is involved in a case until a second lawsuit. .............. Louisiana was one of only three states that allowed insurers to be named directly in initial lawsuits, said Temple. ............. >>


https://www.npr.org/sections/itsall...73620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill

 

[M-Sport fan]

Yes, similarly, I can only imagine the 'bent' of lawmakers who wrote/pushed the rules/laws allowing the medical insurance companies to get away with the actual murder they do with their effing POS Medicare DIS-Advantage plans.

 

[dhminer]

Got an email from progressive that my premiums have decreased. That was a pleasant surprise until I realized the reduction equate to less than $3/month lol.

Y’all in Cali are getting totally screwed.

I pay $1900/year for three vehicles insured at 250/500 with a $500 deductible.

 

[Dpro]

Got an email from progressive that my premiums have decreased. That was a pleasant surprise until I realized the reduction equate to less than $3/month lol.

Y’all in Cali are getting totally screwed.

I pay $1900/year for three vehicles insured at 250/500 with a $500 deductible.

So Jealous 😳 It’s really not just Cali or all of Cali it’s anywhere there are extremely high levels of population and traffic, it’s the big city thing. Friend in San Pedro literally around 25 miles from here on the Coast pays $600 a year for 250/500 for his FiST. Its live in a large city and get jammed up by the Insurance companies. It’s like oh you want to live where cool stuff is happening and going on we are gonna charge you for it.😂