Dragging this up again, my brother's been trying to get quotes for his insurance on a 1.0 saxo. Did an online comparison, nothing under 4k
phoned up a few places, including Admiral who I'm with, still nothing, cheapest we got down to was 3.8k tpft. We then did it with my grandma as owner of the car and him as named driver. I've never fronted before, always had my own insurance and on a 10 month policy I now have 3yrs no claims and I'm 19. Anyway, rang round some places again as it came up as £300 fully comp for her on her own (she has no no claims as she has a licence but doesn't own or drive a car) but with my brother on, it shot up again to nearly 4k. The insurers said it's specifically to cut down on fronting, they know it happens and the only way to stop it is to make it roughly the same price to have your own car and insurance as it is to be a named driver ...that way it's not worth fronting.
He now has a DT125, it's all he can afford to run. It takes the piss tbh, he's still at 6th form and even though he has a weekend job, he can't fork out that much for insurance, it's ridiculous.