Which is probley what a lot of you will be saying when you see these pics!!
A few months back, me a and one of me mates at work built a 2.0i 16v nova.
Nothing out of the ordinary, but this would be his first car! He passed his test on the 30th of december. Up until then I was using it and I can tell you it dont hang around!!
Well anyway, he proved us all right and smashed the f**k out of it.
As you can see, quite a nice little piece.
With a fair bit of poke.
Add a taxi, quite a bit of mph and a silly boy driver and.....one mullered nova!
F**ked to pefection!
The boys at work were very sympathic. By the way glen (the crash test dummy) is second from left.
sorry to say, but it really was inevitable. How much insurance was he paying?? It is sure to be a lot more now unless hes paying out for the damage, worse with another car involved tho.
theory doesnt work Oddball. underpowered cars dont tend to be endoed with brakes or suspension in my experience. Its an invincible attitude young drivers get, and it cant be easily overcome. even slow cars now such as the toyota yaris are on a par with performance variants from a few years back like nova SRs etc, and i know which id rather have from a handling point of view.
What is needed IMO is insurance companies who take a lenient wiew to certan mods such as brake and suspension upgrades, roll cages etc, but completely disallow engine mods. Unfortunately there are very few companies who will cover under 19s on modified cars now.
I will say tho, that the above is within reason, and all ddrivers should be learning till they stop. When you first pass, you are effectively still a learner as you are learning all over again on the road on your own. As such, an xe nova is a stupid, and dangerous car to be driving.
I would personnally like to see encouragement for young people to drive bigger cars TBH, the hot hatch craze only exists because of the insurance situation, but vectras, cavs, etc are much safer cars, and also much more stable handling platforms. whatever anyone says, it will always be easier to recover a wider longer car that id more directionally stabel in the first place (there are exceptions I know)
theory doesnt work Oddball. underpowered cars dont tend to be endoed with brakes or suspension in my experience. Its an invincible attitude young drivers get, and it cant be easily overcome. even slow cars now such as the toyota yaris are on a par with performance variants from a few years back like nova SRs etc, and i know which id rather have from a handling point of view.
I'd rather inexperienced drivers drove bad handling cars to be honest. If they don't scare themselves into driving slowly then at least they won't be going too fast when they leave the road and what/whoever they hot stands have a chance of surviving.
depends what you mean by a bad nadling car TBH, bad as in loses grip predictably at low speed, I agree with you, but some cars Ive driven are just utterly unpredictable, and they are ***king unsafe for anyone, never mind someone who learning the ropes.
You should have to drive a rev/speed limited car for at least a year after you pass your test. The reason most young drivers crash is inexperience. Get a years experience in a car that you are going to find it hard to crash and hopefully when you get in one that is quicker, you will have a much better chance of surviving.
fast cars are daft for most people as a first car
be ok if you drove sensibly, but people who want a fast car dont want to drive within the speed limit, most of the people I know who are 'in to' their cars have wrote them off, and it's been small cars too, just lack of experience, so having a fast car would have just meant the possibility of the accident being worse"!
the people I know who just drive to get from A to B haven't had as many accidents
I'd have to agree that, when youngsters do pass their tests, they (myself included) think they are the best drivers on the road. "It'll never happen to me etc" I've just finished my first year of driving (I'm 18) and I've got my years no claims. First year of driving I had small(ish) engined cars while my folks were driving about in V6's.
Now that I can afford to insure one, I've got myself a V6. To be fair, I probably still don't have the experience required to drive a 170bhp car, but I'm glad I waited because if I had a powerful car in the early days, that best driver around attitude would have almost certainly killed me.
Out of interest, whats the gen with the insurance? On the Nova? Have they seen the car?
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