One luxury car brand has taken to offering its own insurance to drivers after a series of safety issues makes it less than appealing to third party insurers.
The Range Rover is a vehicle many associate as being elite, prestigious, reliable and safe. But the Solihull-based car giant has been forced to take matters into its own hands as motorists are hit with security problems.
The issue has become so widely known, insurers are charging astronomical sums to insure them, which is why Land Rover has stepped in and offered its own in-house insurance package.
Just last November, Land Rover issued a statement telling owners of its pre-2018 cars to take them in for a free enhanced security package.
Issues are also said to be affecting sales of the company’s vehicles, with one London lawyer telling the Telegraph he gave up trying to insure a V8 Range Rover he had purchased as a replacement for one he had stolen from the street.
He told the title: “I told the police it was a V8 and they asked where I lived. When I said Westminster they weren’t surprised, they said it was probably in Nigeria by now. Neither was the insurance company which paid up the £70,000 value in six weeks without a question.”
He said that when he found a replacement the insurance quote was £26,000, prompting him to give up with the V8 entirely and opt for a hybrid model which he said cost less than a third of the previous quote to insure.
The man said the “ridiculous” issue was becoming an “epidemic” and dismissed the company’s safety updates. He told the Telegraph: “We get one a month inviting us to go to a dealer to have the software flashed.
“But they want you to take your car to the middle of nowhere to have it done, they take the entire day, there’s no courtesy car and you have to make your own way there and back; it’s an absolute pain.”
According to car insurer AXA, it is not just Range Rovers which have seen a dramatic increase in thefts, with Lexus cars seeing a 22pc rise in thefts between 2021 and 2023.
Other luxury branded cars also suffering from increased thefts includes Mercedes, BMW and Audi. AXA told the Telegraph that the keyless technology, which allows people to unlock cars with their fingers, is at an “all time high” and shows “no signs of slowing down.”
But Land Rover models are still among the most targetted cars, with thefts increasing by 80pc during the same period and Range Rovers making up 75pc of those stolen.
Despite the figures, Land Rover says the theft rate of new Range Rovers and Range Rover Sport cars is just 0.07pc telling the Telegraph its cars “consistently exceed standards set by Thatcham, the UK’s leading automotive risk intelligence company”.
