New drivers

The first year of driving is the most expensive one you'll have. Most of that cost is insurance rather than the car itself. That single fact should shape nearly every decision you make.

Two things drive the price. One is the car, which you control completely. The other is your record, which only time builds. A modest engine in a low insurance group does more for a first premium than any amount of shopping around, so the car and the cover are really one decision.

The rules are moving too, and not uniformly across the UK. Our guide to new driver rules in 2026 sets out what's changing and, more usefully, where. The headline restrictions apply in Northern Ireland only. Great Britain saw a much quieter set of changes, and plenty of what circulates online muddles the two.

Cover starts before the test does. Practising in someone else's car needs its own insurance, and there are two ways to arrange it. You can add the learner to the owner's policy, or buy a standalone learner policy.

Learner driver insurance explains what each one protects. The difference shows up when there's a claim: one route can cost the car's owner their no-claims discount, and the other is built not to.

Then there's the mistake that undoes everything else. Naming a parent as the main driver of a car a young person actually drives is called fronting. Why fronting voids a policy explains what insurers look for, and why a voided policy is far worse than an expensive one. A cancellation follows you for years, and you have to declare it every time you buy cover.

Which car, though, is the half of the decision you actually control. The best used cars for new drivers takes the insurance group seriously rather than listing the usual names. One generation of Fiesta spans groups 2 to 30, so the model tells you far less than the individual car does.

Buying the car itself comes first, though. Our used-car buying guides cover the checks that matter most on a cheap first car. Older cars are where a history check earns its keep. Outstanding finance and a repaired write-off are both invisible from the driveway.