I have the chance of buying an oldish Vauxhall Corsa 1.5D (3dr hatch), however come this summer I will be holding several free parties and I want a vehicle big enough to carry a smallish sound system in. My plan is to remove the rear seats of this car and cover up the rear windows with something i.e cardboard or 100% tint film (don't really want to draw police attention by having tints though, unless I can find some that is the same colour as the car). Can anyone see any practical or legal implications of doing this? I don't think I'd need to declare it to the insurance as I could simply say that I have removed the rear seats in order to carry something, which is true, and I can't see any legal implications as long as I'm not carrying people in the back. Any input?
as for the Tint.. i believe you are allowed it in the back of the car.. just not the front... (not 100% sure on this tho)
Afaik, car-vans are a fair bit cheaper to insure than cars. It may be worth looking into how much work you have to do so your insurer classifies it as a van, unless you plan to put the seats back in that is.
That is correct, there is no law that says you have to be able to see out of the back window of the car (hence why you don't have to have an inside rearview mirror, either). However, window tints have 'barry boy' connotations and I don't really want anything on the car which will encourage the police to pull me over. Had no idea car-derived vans were a lower insurance group than cars. However, wouldn't the insurer class it as a modified vehicle and actually charge more?
Being 19 with no NCB the insurance on an Astra or an Escort would be very high, plus they would be quite a bit older than the Corsa I'm looking at so I'd imagine that would push the insurance even further up. Do you happen to know what insurance group the Astra and Escort are in?
Generally vans are cheaper to insure than cars, only 2 seats, no expensive stereo to nick and slower than the car counter part. Older vehicles tend to mean lower premiums.
I highly doubt the insurance on an escort van (say 1.3L) is going to be segnificatly differant to a corsa. I use to have a mk4 scort van with a 1.3 and it was a great little run around relly cost my dad an extra £30 a month to insure me on it just after i passed my test.
Why not paint the inside of the windows the same colour as the car. It's cheaper too and totally opaque and has the benifit of looking almost OE on the car. Look into what the darkest legal tint you are allowed to have in your windows is if that's the road you want to go down. In Australia it's T35 (35% light transmitted) which isn't all that dark. Remember that if you make any mod to a car that's illegal, ALL insurance companies will jump at the chance to refuse to pay up if you have an accident. It always pays to do your homework in advance. It could be a lot cheaper for you in the long run.
theres no legal issues with stripping as fas as i know. most of the gsi owners over on the corsa-b.co.uk have stripped out their cars. but why get a corsa and turn it into a van when you could just buy a corsa van in the first place that way it'd already be registerd as a van on the v5? http://attr-search.ebay.co.uk/corsa...Z1QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQga10244Z10425QQsacatZ9801 you could aslo look at vauxhall combos there the big backed vans with a corsa front end
