ONE YEAR WITH THE SMART FORTWO - INSURING THE SMART FOR A SECOND YEAR

On the last day of June The Good Car Guy began looking back at One Year With The Smart. Then a couple weeks later, a complete rundown of Numbers was generated. For the first time in its brief existence, GoodCarBadCar.net has hosted a long-term test car. Reviewing a 2009 smart fortwo pure for one year has produced some interesting revelations, some impressive statistics, and a whole lot of contentedness. Now to top things off, an auto insurance anecdote.

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Ranking the worst parts of buying a new car is a really difficult task. There's the meeting with the Business Manager who wants to, or is supposed to, sell you all sorts of add-ons. Before that comes the chequing account and spreadsheet perusal - can you really afford that car? There's the agony over colour choices: dealerships frequently don't have the car you want in the colour you want. You might have to wait a couple days.

Finally, you've got to finalize your automotive insurance. Eek. 

The team behind GoodCarBadCar.net is small. At any one time you're unlikely to find more than two people inside GCBC Towers. The Good Car Girl has never been stopped by police. True, the story is different for The Good Car Guy, but not terribly so. There's only one ticket in our joint history, and it's ancient history at that. Failing to obey a traffic sign? He was a nice officer - the sign displayed the speed limit; the cost of the ticket could've been much worse.

So you'd think automotive insurance would be an inexpensive part of GoodCarBadCar.net's livelihood. You'd be wrong. Nova Scotians pay through the nose for auto insurance, although everybody probably feels that way, no matter the province or state. 

In year numero uno of the white smart fortwo's stay at GCBC Towers, insurance companies were either rejecting us because of our age or rejecting us in spirit by generating out-of-this-world car insurance quotes. It felt as though almost every insurance company in the city of Halifax had been called or email when, on our last attempt, a quote was given by Dominion Canada - via an insurance salesman in Spryfield - that was 40% lower than any other quote we'd heard.

Better yet, renewal time just came up, and insurance costs for GCBC's long-term smart fortwo dropped again. Clean driving and increased experience led to a 22% cut for 2010-2011. Of course, we made a few calls again to make sure other companies wouldn't look more favourably upon us one year later. Guess what? They wouldn't/didn't/won't. 

GoodCarBadCar.net's long-term 2009 smart fortwo pure is an efficient little urban runabout. Considering the low mileage put up by The Good Car Guy, the efficiency of the smart, the free servicing at O'Regan's Mercedes-Benz, and the decreasing cost of automotive insurance, life with our smart car is just getting cheaper and cheaper.