Having purchased their first-ever hypercar, Dave and Damon from DDE were riding high on cloud nine. Unfortunately, they’re quickly discovering hypercar ownership has a number of insane hidden costs.
Buying a McLaren P1 in itself is no mean feat. With the DailyDrivenExotics crew having done just that, they’re suddenly realizing its not just the purchase cost of the car that’s extortionate.
Since the cars are being used for business (YouTube) they need to be commercially insured. While that doesn’t seem to be an issue for the other supercars, for the P1 it’s proving tricky.
Speaking about the situation, Damon says “The P1 is proving a pain in the a** to insure. To be honest, we really didn’t think that through. To be honest, we’re not sure what to do.”
Only one insurance option: ICBC
Being based in BC, insurance is government-controlled and there is only the one option: ICBC. This means that for ‘core’ insurance to drive cars legally on the road, drivers can’t ‘shop around’ for the best deal. This is proving costly for the DDE team, as they didn’t consider this issue with the P1.
Damon also reveals that for the famous ‘tire slayer’ Huracan they had on the channel, one year’s insurance was a whopping $18,000.
This is partly due to being insured commercially for the channel, but that’s still an insane amount of money. Anywhere else, it should be “like $3500” for the year, for reference.
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The monthly insurance payments on the other cars are also insane. The 720 is $1200 per month, while the Gallardo is $950 per month.
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“We kind of messed up on this one!”
ICBC insurance does have a special path known as ‘rate group 98’ specifically designed for ‘luxury’ vehicles.
Unfortunately, even this couldn’t save the P1. ICBC actually flat-out denied insuring the P1 for commercial use. Taken aback by the result, Damon admits: “We probably should’ve talked this over before we got the camera out!”
“This car just went from being a kind of joke headache, to being like a legit headache. We kind of f****d up on this one, we didn’t realize this car [the P1] was going to be so hard to insure.”
Damon also revealed that the monthly payments on the car are $37,000. That means that for a car that they can’t create content with (which in turn makes them money) it is, for now, just a fancy paperweight.