Oh, you’ll never guess why…
You might think insurance for a modern American muscle car is similarly insane no matter what brand you buy. If so, you’d be wrong. This fact was recently pointed out by MotorTrend and Insure.com which ran a hypothetical scenario to compare how the Ford Mustang, Chevy Camaro, and Dodge Challenger stacked up to each other for policy rates. The end result was that the Mopar was significantly more expensive to insure and there’s good reason for that.
Learn how your car’s color affects insurance rates here.
To calculate the different insurance rates, the insurance website used a hypothetical single 40-year-old man with a clean driving record, good credit, and a short daily commute. They kept everything else the same for each of the quotes, although it’s not clear where this hypothetical guy was living (which has a huge impact on insurance rates for any vehicle).
Then they looked at everything from the base to the top-end models for all three muscle cars. Shockingly, the Dodge Challenger was the most expensive to insure in each model category. This was especially true when the Hellcat Redeye was compared to the Camaro ZL1 and Shelby GT500, with the annual rates coming in at $3,282, $2,488, and $2,539 respectively.
That’s as far as the MotorTrend story goes, probably because they don’t want to offend Stellantis. Well, we have no such concerns but instead want to tell the truth. And while we don’t have any definite evidence about why the insurance rates were so much higher for the Mopars, we have a funny feeling it has to do with the high theft rate of Dodges, at least in part.
GM and Ford haven’t announced a whole slate of fancy security upgrades for their hottest muscle car models like Dodge has. While we see some Camaros and Mustangs stolen, we see far more stories of Dodges swiped. If criminals are drawn to a specific vehicle like the moth to the flame, insurance companies will notice that and react accordingly.
