The best cars with cheap insurance for teenage drivers in 2021

Choosing your first car is an exciting experience for most teenagers and first-time drivers, but picking the wrong make and model can mean paying thousands of pounds in extra insurance.

A Volkswagen Up! or Peugeot 108 might not be the coolest-looking first car, but they are among the cheapest options to insure, according to data from Compare the Market, a price comparison website.

By opting for the Volkswagen city car, drivers between 17 and 24 years of age paid an average £636 on car insurance between November 2020 and January 2021, although the £4,542 average purchase price may put some off.

The Citroen C1 was a cheaper alternative, with the car costing £2,764. Younger drivers typically paid £704 for their insurance on this model, according to the comparison site.

This was some way below the average premium for teenage drivers. In 2021 the average insurance policy cost young drivers £1,083, more than three times the cost for older drivers. By comparison, those over the age of 65 paid on average £314, the cheapest of any age group.

Yet these cars received little love from new drivers. According to Compare the Market, fewer than 3pc of young people requiring car insurance looked into insuring the Volkswagen Up!, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 108, which cost an average £705 to insure.

Traditional favourites such as the Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa and Volkswagen Polo remained the most popular options, but each would have cost more than £1,000 to insure. The Volkswagen Golf and Vauxhall Astra, the fifth and sixth most searched-for cars, would have cost more than £1,300 in premiums.