You won’t be driving around very much during this Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s where you can save on your motor insurance.

There’s an insurance company that offers up to 30% discount for low-mileage motorists.

This is a tip shared by members of the Malaysia Singapore Vintage and Classic Car Register (MSVCR) who, by nature of being car enthusiasts, usually have many cars to their names, classics as well as modern daily drives.

While a normal person will do about 15,000km – 20,000km a year, car enthusiasts probably distribute this mileage among the various vehicles that many of them own.

With these owners, it’s very probable that the enthusiast owns a classic car from the 1960s, let’s say a fin tail Mercedes-Benz 200, a Volvo 122 or a Mini Cooper or a Datsun 1600 SSS, and clocks up less than 5,000km a year.

It’s equally likely that his modern cars will not clock a mileage beyond 10,000km a year because he’s like a man with four horses – he’s got to make sure that he’s fair and that each of his modern cars are driven and properly exercised .

It would have been this market that prompted Pacific & Orient (P&O) to provide Promilej, a comprehensive motor insurance package that prices its products based on three tiers – 5,000km, 10,000km and 15,000 km.

P&O’s Promilej package is a no-brainer this year because travelling has been restricted by the MCO response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We can’t pop off to Pulau Redang on a whim any more.

I compared the Promilej 10,000km comprehensive motor insurance package against that offered by my regular motor insurers, MSIG and Allianz, for my 7-year old Land Rover valued by the insurer at RM73,000.

The Promilej 10,000km package is priced at RM1,528 compared with the MSIG and Allianz which both came in at RM2,278 and RM2,234 respectively.

But don’t just look at the price. The Promilej comes with caveats mainly that if you exceed the 10,000km limit without topping up to the next tier of 15,000km, then your policy will default to a bare bones third-party coverage.

In that case, the insurer “wins” and you “lose”, because a third-party insurance policy costs less than 30% of comprehensive motor insurance cover.

You need to inform P&O and top up before you exceed the mileage.

The other way around that, of course, is to use your other cars when the 10,000km mark is coming up on the Promilej insured car.

Actually, while all motor insurance rates are about the same, because they are regulated by Bank Negara since forever, the 20 or so insurers still compete to provide the best comprehensive motor insurance coverage.

Remember, we’re talking about comprehensive motor insurance. The bare bones third-party insurance rate is so low that insurers probably would prefer not to sell it if they weren’t required to do so by the central bank.

And this is the second point: if your car is not a popular or valuable model targeted by car thieves and you have the appetite for self-insurance, then buy third party insurance. I could have bought such a policy for my Defender for less than RM300 except that I fondly imagine that my favourite car is a target for car thieves and I’ve no appetite to lose so much money .

If there hadn’t been a pandemic and under normal circumstances, I would have insured my precious Defender with AXA which has a superior motor insurance product because it’s accompanied by telemetry.

This Defender model was discontinued by Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover in 2016 after a continuous production run of 67 years.

Prices of this particular model have since defied gravity worldwide for reasons best known only to enthusiasts. For well-kept specimens, the second-hand prices of this vehicle are quoted above the new price of RM158,000 when it was last available in 2017 from SD Auto Connexion Sdn Bhd.

For example, sellers were asking RM175,000 to RM200,000 as observed on popular car-sales platform Mudah. Whether sales were struck at the price point is another question, of course.

But my requests for a higher valuation were denied by the motor insurance companies.

Thus, once the pandemic has settled on a more certain, endemic, course, and land travel is permitted again, I’ll be going for AXA’s comprehensive motor insurance policy which provides the policy holder an option to install one of the most powerful anti-theft devices in the market: Connex Defence.

This is a wire-free device and can be hidden anywhere in the vehicle. To minimise the chance of detection by scanners, this device is in sleep mode and wakes up randomly three times a day to check for theft commands.

This will be my mode of protecting my irreplaceable Landy. Watch this space for my update on the latest technology to protect your treasured vehicle against thieves.

Remember, even though the rate of car thefts in Malaysia has been almost halved from 2019 to 2020, about 20 vehicles (including motorcycles) a day are still being stolen with the top three being the Proton Iswara, the Proton Wira and the Toyota Hilux.

Owners have to protect their own cars because some car companies have the attitude that car thefts lead to more sales.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.