I am travelling in America and am about to but a Honda Civic in Chicago. A few questions :
Can anyone recommend the best car insurer to use?
I have anticipated having to pay for the car (obviously), insurance, aaa, a gps, registration fee and $25 dollars purchasing tax. Any ideas how much registering a car in Chicago is (or possibly in Wisconsin) and how much registering / getting a title will cost?
Cheers
Your best bet is going to be to call as many as you can, and find someone who will actually insure you. You might even try your own insurance person in your home country, and see if there are any companies that they have a relationship with in the US.
We here in the US are constantly asking each other which insurance company is the best.
We aren’t going to be able to answer it for you any easier.
BC.
Have seen a decenet quote on progressive.com but its for 6 months and i will only be wanting it for 3 months.
I wonder if you or anyone else could instruct me on use tax in illinois and whether I have to pay it when purchasing a car there. Am trawling through forums and dmv sites and not sure whether I would have to pay it and how much it would cost?? I have seen 6.25% on some websites, 0 on some forums. Confused!!
This could turn out to be difficult. If you don’t have a permanent address in the U.S., you may have issues registering the car. You’ll have to sort that out before worrying about costs.
If you only need the car for three months, a long-term rental will definitely be easier and will likely also be cheaper.
When you buy a car, the sales tax is paid to that state at the time of sale and registration. (Dealers handle that if you use a dealer). Depending on the cost of the car, sales tax will run about $800. Then the license, again depending on the cost of the car, will run up to $300 per year for the plates. Insurance, who knows, anywhere from $600-1200 per year. Advice remains the same for foreign travelers-it is much better and cheaper to simply rent a car long term, than buy one, unless you will be around for a couple years.
We have exhausted our research into renting a car and it just isn’t as cheap/convenient as you might imagine. The fact that we would be starting in Chicago and ending in Texas causes lots of problems for starters and the costs are just higher.
Costs that I have found out are for a toyota camry 2004- $2000 / $2600 (two cars we’re looking at). Registering the car in chicago is $99, getting a title is $90, aaa cover for 3 of us is $82, insurance for the 3 of us with Progressive is $400. Then, I have read that use sales tax would be 6.25% - $125. So the total cost would be $2800 / $3400. Is there anything I’m leaving out because we are going to be in Chicago in 10 days and are trying to finalise our budgets.
If everything doesn’t work out then we just hop on a greyhound / megabus and rent a car cheaply for shortexcursions.
@lion9car - Thanks for the address warning. We have thought about this and have looked at Wisconsin to register and title the car as on the webpage it says you can do it with a PO BOX.