As a child, you probably enjoyed sitting on a swing seat in your back garden or in a playground and trying to get as high up in the air as you could perhaps with the help of one of your parents pushing you. You may well have got to a height of 3 or 4 feet off the ground.
Well, you may be interested to read that four skydivers from the Red Bull Skydiving Team have recently completed the longest swing in the world with the help of a very long rope and a couple of hot air balloons. In fact, the rope was actually 125 metres in length – a little longer than the ones used with garden swings!
The rope was attached to one of the hot air balloons and the skydivers were in the other hot air balloon in which the swing seat was placed having been attached to the other end of the rope. Apparently, the two hot air balloons were taken to a height of 1,800 metres with both remaining at the same height and were also kept a certain distance apart that must have been difficult to achieve.
One of the skydivers then sat on the swing seat that was balanced on the edge of the hot air balloon’s basket before releasing themselves into the air no doubt making a rapid freefall descent before the rope went tight and the swinging motion then came into play. The skydiver had a red flare attached to their ankle and during the whole process he reached a speed of in excess of 100km per hour.
However, not content to make a gradual descent sitting on the swing attached to the hot air balloon, the skydiver then vacated the seat mid-air to skydive to safety on the ground doing a few flips on the way down. Congratulations to those skydivers for completing the world’s longest swing.
Airsports Insurance Bureau Limited are pleased to announce that Tansar Insurance has joined our panel of insurer partners.
Tansar are a specialist motor underwriting agency able to write a variety of the UK’s motor products. Some of those products include non-standard car and van insurance, specialist vehicles such as motorhomes or kit cars, motor cycles and high and mid net worth cars. They offer a wide range of benefits across all their products ranging from new vehicle replacement to personal accident benefits.
AIB Spokesperson Leah Burt commented: “We have known the management team at Tansar for many years and share the same passion for providing expertise and a true commitment to customer service and product provision. We are looking forward to forging a mutually beneficial, profitable relationship for our ever growing client bank to enjoy.”
To find out more about our new partner Tansar, visit the following link: http://www.tansar.co.uk/
Unfortunately, for many motorists, the cost of insuring their cars has been on the increase for quite some time as insurers have raised their premiums for a number of reasons. This is borne out by the Confused.com car insurance price index covering the second quarter of 2016.
The above index reveals that the average cost of fully comprehensive car insurance rose an average of 19% when compared with the second quarter of last year. The average premium for this level of cover in Q2 of 2016 stood at £715 per annum. You have to go back to Q2 of 2011 before you will find a larger year-on-year % increase when premiums rose by 25%.
When you compare the cost of insuring your car with this type of cover between Q1 and Q2 of 2016, premiums have gone up by 6% in the space of 3 months with this equating to a monetary increase in premiums of an average of £44 per annum.
Looking at premiums on a regional basis, it is Northern Ireland that has seen the biggest annual increase with a rise of 25% in the 12 months to the second quarter of 2016. In that quarter, Motorists in that part of the UK were paying an average of £863 per annum. Those motorists living in Inner London pay more on average for their comprehensive car insurance than any other UK region – £1,164 per annum. Motorists in the South West saw their premiums rise by an average of 20% in the 12 months to Q2 of 2016.
However, on the positive side, motorists living in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands and Hereford saw their premiums drop by average of 4% and 2% respectively.
Interestingly, it is the young motorist who has seen the smallest annual rise in premiums with 17 year olds paying, on average, an extra 8% when comparing Q2 of 2015 with Q2 of 2016. A 61 year old has seen premiums rise by an average of 24% over the same period. Having said that, a 17 year old would pay an average of £2,103 per annum for their cover whereas a 61 year old would only pay an average of £418 per annum.
So, if you have just received your car insurance renewal notice or are shortly to do so, you may wish to shop around to see if you can get a better deal on your cover elsewhere. In this respect, why not get in touch with us here at AIB Insurance on 02380 268 351 and speak with an experienced member of our team who will endeavor to obtain a competitive quotation for car insurance for your consideration.
Those of you who are owners and enthusiasts of sports cars will be aware that Lotus Cars is an iconic brand that has been around for in excess of sixty years. The British sports and racing car manufacturer was founded by Colin Chapman and is renowned for the likes of the Elise, Esprit and Elan vehicles as well as for Team Lotus participating in Formula One racing.
Therefore, it was with great pleasure that AIB Insurance attended this year’s Lotus Festival Brands Hatch GP event that took place over the Bank Holiday weekend on Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th August. It was the second year that we have had a presence having thoroughly enjoyed it on our first visit.
This wonderful event is arranged by our friends at The Lotus Forums and this year’s one was the tenth with seven of them having taken place at Brands Hatch that has witnessed many thrilling two and four wheel motor vehicle races since first opening way back in 1926.
We had the usual August Bank Holiday weather with a combination of sunshine and rain but this did not dampen proceedings. In fact, many thousands of Lotus Cars fans visited over the two-day period to enjoy the numerous fantastic and varied things that were organized. It was great to see so many Lotus Cars all in one location with over 1,000 vehicles coming along.
There were trade stands providing a variety of goods and services to appeal to Lotus owners. From our point of view, it was lovely to meet so many of our clients face-to-face whom previously we had perhaps only had the opportunity to speak with on the phone when providing competitive quotations to insure their modern or classic Lotus cars.
There was a full schedule of races and demonstrations taking place over the two days including the Elise Trophy, Lotus Cup UK and the Lotus Cup Europe with the later being won by Steve Williams from Britain. The Best in Show winner of the 2016 Show and Shine competition was Roger Penn with his Lotus Elan S4 SE. The Lotus Sunbeam rally cars enjoyed driving their vehicles around the challenging rally course at Brands Hatch.
It was also good to see so many Lotus clubs attending the festival with many of their members bringing along their cars to be enjoyed by visitors to the event. We hope that those clubs have been able to sign-up a few more members over the two days to take advantage of the many benefits that being a member provides.
Once again, many thanks to all of you who took the opportunity to come over to our stand and introduce yourselves at this year’s Lotus Festival. We look forward to meeting you and any new clients again at future events. Here at AIB Insurance, we have many years experience in arranging cover for Lotus sports cars so if you would like to receive a quotation without any obligation why not give us a call on 02380 268 351 and speak with a friendly, knowledgeable member of our team.
Selling personal registration plates for cars is big business here in the UK with the DVLA raising many millions of pounds each year by auctioning cherished plates as they are also sometimes referred to. Yes, of course you can buy such number plates for a few hundred pounds but equally the most sought after combinations of letters and numbers can fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds and can often be seen on the front and reverse of expensive, executive cars.
So, let’s have a look at the ten most expensive personal number plates that have been sold in the UK but in reverse order: –
10th – Registration Number “1 O” – Sale Price £210,242
In 2009 this number plate was sold at a Northampton auction for the above price to an anonymous buyer. It would be interesting to get an estimate as to how much such a plate would fetch today as it would appear to be a desirable one as it has so few characters.
9th – Registration Number “K1 NGS” – Sale Price £231,000
This was sold way back in 1993 when even then it went for a considerable sum of money. It would appear to be fit for a car driven by royalty and is believed to have been bought by an Arabian Sultan.
8th – Registration Number “1 RH” – Sale Price £247,000
Back in 2006 this sought after plate achieved an excellent sale price being purchased by Robert Harverson who is a retired businessman.
7th – Registration Number “5I NGH” – Sale Price £254,000
This plate was bought in 2006 by a Sikh gentleman. This is no doubt an extremely desirable plate and ten years later who knows what it might fetch if it were to be auctioned now.
6th – Registration Number “VIP 1” – Sale Price £285,000
If you are a football fan then you will have heard of Roman Abramovich. He is the owner of Chelsea Football Club that play in the Premiership and he is believed to be a Russian multi-billionaire. So, when he purchased the above plate in 2006 it may have been a modest investment on his part.
5th – Registration Number “M 1” – Sale Price £331,500
In 2006, this plate was purchased by a businessman called Mike McComb who sold a mobile phone business for many millions of pounds.
4th – Registration Number “1 D” – Sale Price £352,000
Now you may think this plate was owned by a member of the pop group One Direction but this is not the case. In 2009, the purchaser was a businessman from Lebanon.
3rd – Registration Number “S 1” – Sale Price £404,000
The above plate is thought to be the first one ever registered to someone from Scotland. It was purchased anonymously in 2008 by a person who, apparently, had claimed that he or she was going to put it on their Skoda.
2nd – Registration Number “F 1” –Sale Price £440,000
No, this plate is not owned by Lewis Hamilton, any other Formula 1 racing driver or Bernie Eccleston for that matter. It was purchased in 2008 by a businessman from Bradford in West Yorkshire who has it on his extremely powerful and expensive motor vehicle – a Mercedes-Benz SLR Mclaren.
1st – Registration Number “25 O” –Sale Price £518,000
In 2014, the above cherished number plate was purchased by John Collins who deals in Ferraris. The plate adorns a Ferrari 250 SWB, a beautiful classic sports car, that was once owned by Eric Clapton.
So, as you can see, the £500,000 figure that someone has been prepared to pay for a personal number plate for a car has been exceeded here in the UK. How long will it be before we see a personalized number plate sell for £1 million in this country?
If you are a fan of the BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses that starred the likes of David Jason (Del Boy), Nicholas Lyndhurst (Rodney) and John Challis (Boycie) then you may be interested to read that an E-Type Jaguar that featured in an episode of the above has recently been sold at auction for over £115,000, significantly exceeding the estimated price.
The 1973 Jaguar E-Type Series 111 Roadster – known as “Boycie’s E-Type with the registration number UYP 694M was sold at Silverstone Auctions The Salon Prive Sale 2016 earlier this month. The bodywork was painted in Old English White, a blue interior and a V12 5.3-litre engine that produced a significant amount of power to satisfy those motorists requiring a sports car with some speed.
Back in 1981, the then owner of this wonderful classic open-topped sports car lent it to the BBC to feature in the “Go West Young Man” episode of the above comedy series. In the program, Boycie bought the car for his lover for her birthday and it was temporarily stored in Del Boy’s garage. Del Boy and Rodney decided to take the E-Type out for a drive but unfortunately were involved in a road traffic accident with another vehicle going into the back of the car (just to reassure you – the Jaguar E-Type was not damaged).
The classic car was sold in excellent condition at the above auction having been kept in a heated garage for 10 years. It came with a full service history and manuals. Presumably, one of the reasons why it ended up being sold at far above its estimated price was because it had featured in such a popular TV comedy series.
Here at AIB Insurance, we frequently arrange classic car insurance so, if you are the proud owner of a vintage vehicle, why not speak with a member of our team on 02380 268 351 who will gladly seek to obtain a competitive quotation for your consideration without any obligation.
If you participate in sailing then you may be interested to read that the SV Tenacious, the world’s biggest utilized tall sailing ship made of wood, has recently completed a sailing trip from the UK to Australia. The 65 metre long vessel that weighs 586 tonnes set off from Southampton back in November last year and nine months later, in July 2016, arrived in Sydney, Australia – a distance of 18,000 miles. It is now on a year long tour around the coast of Australia.
One thing that is particularly interesting about this vessel is that it can be crewed by people with disabilities as well as those without a disability. The tall ship with 21 sails that cover an area of 1200 square metres was built for the Jubilee Sailing Trust and was launched back in 2000. 65% of the funding to build the vessel came from the National Lottery.
It has some features that are for the benefit of disabled people who sail it including those in wheelchairs. For instance, the decks are wide and flat making it easy to get around the ship. To get between the decks there are wheel chair lifts. It has a speaking compass that will make it easier for those that are say partially sighted and a hearing loop for those that have hearing difficulties. For those people who are not particularly strong, the hydraulic power assisted steering no doubt proves invaluable. Some of the toilets and showers are designed with the severely disabled in mind. It has a mess room, bar, bunks and some cabins that are suitable for disabled people.
It has a professional crew of 7 supported by a number of volunteers who are experienced sailors. 40 guest crew are permitted on a voyage of whom 8 can be wheelchair users.
So, if you are interested in going on a voyage on the SV Tenacious at some point in the future, why not get in touch with the Jubilee Trust.
If you are a classic car enthusiast, you may well be aware that the annual Monterey Car Auctions that took place this August in the USA is one of the most exclusive of such events. There were six major auction houses offering classic vehicles for sale including Bonhams, RM Sotheby’s and Gooding & Co with some cars being sold for in excess of $10 million each.
Whilst the final figure for the total amount generated is not yet available, the indication is that there has been a reduction in the value of sales from the various auctions in comparison to last year. In fact, this is the second year in succession that there has been a fall in the amount generated from the sale of classic cars at these auctions.
The figure so far generated from this August’s auctions is $344.9 million. Last year the figure was $396.8 million.
Apparently, the Monterey Car Auctions are a good indicator as to how classis car values are doing. For quite some time now, classic cars have been viewed as an excellent form of investment in comparison to the likes of stocks and shares. It will be interesting to see if this continues to be the case.
The top 5 sales at the above auctions were: –
1. 1955 Jaguar D-Type Roadster that was sold for $21,780,000.
2. 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo Spider that went for $19,800,000.
3. 1959 Ferrari 250 GT California LWB Alloy Spider that achieved a sale price of $18,150,000.
4. 1962 Shelby Cobra 260 Roadster that went for $13,750,000
5. 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Competizione Coupe that fetched $13,500,000.
In fact, 5 of the classic cars that featured in the league table for the 10 top selling vehicles were Ferraris. Perhaps this is not surprising when you consider that a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta was sold at auction in August 2014 for a world record price of $38,115,000.
If your classic car insurance is coming up for renewal then why not get in touch with a member of the knowledgeable team here at AIB Insurance on 02380 268 351 with a view to obtaining a competitive quotation.
If you were old enough to drive a car in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and took a fancy to fast sports hatchbacks then it is almost certain that you will be familiar with the Peugeot 205 GTI. The 1.6 litre version was launched in 1984 and was later followed by the more powerful 1.9 litre engine.
One of the reasons why it no doubt appealed to some people was because of the speed produced by its powerful 126 bhp engine. It was capable of getting from 0 to 60 mph in an impressive 7.6 seconds and had a top speed of 125 mph.
You may be interested and some may perhaps be surprised to read that an F registered 1989 Peugeot 205 1.9 GTI with an estimate of between £18,000 to £22,000 was sold at The Silverstone Classic Sale 2016 that recently took place for £30,938 which was a world record for that make and model. That is quite a bit higher than its estimated sale price.
The silver metallic car was bought brand new by its only owner on the 8th May 1989 for £10,001.93. It has done a mere 7,986 miles as, not long after buying the vehicle, the owner’s employer provided him with a company car so it only tended to be used over the summer period. The car was laid up for a lengthy period between June 2004 and February 2012. The car is in wonderful condition throughout so much so that, apparently, nobody has ever sat in the back of it. The half-leather seats are two-tone and the interior is in immaculate condition. The ash tray and cigarette lighter have never been used.
There may be a number of other modern classic cars from the 1980’s and 1990’s that would make good investments and achieve excellent prices at auction.
If you are looking to insure your classic car, either from the modern era or one from back in the 1930’s, then why not get in touch with us here at AIB Insurance on 02380 268 351 and speak with a member of our team who will gladly obtain a quotation for classic car insurance for you to consider without any obligation.
AIB Insurance is extremely proud to announce that Oak Underwriting plc has recently been added to our ever growing, closely vetted panel of insurers. The company was established back in 2000 and specialises in providing home, motor, travel and marine insurance to high net worth individuals.
Oak Underwriting has grown rapidly since its formation and in less than 5 years it had written its 10,000 household policy. So highly thought of in the insurance industry, the company was acquired by the RSA Group in April 2011. The later employs about 13,500 staff and wrote net premiums of £6.8 billion in 2015.
The company is renowned for the outstanding service levels that it provides to its many high net worth clients and in November 2015, Oak Underwriting won the High Net Worth Personal Lines Team of the Year award in the 2015 Underwriting Service Awards.
The home insurance cover that it provides is tailor-made to meet the exacting needs of our high net worth clients providing them with complete peace of mind that their valuable property and possessions are covered in the most suitable way possible. Oak Underwriting’s Family Motor Fleet Collection policy enables a family to insure their prestigious vehicles with a number of cover and premium options. Worldwide family travel insurance is available as an optional extra for those arranging home insurance through the company. Marine insurance can be put in place to cover a variety of waterborne craft including the likes of speedboats, motorboats and sailing craft.
It is to be hoped that our clients do not need to claim on one or more of their policies but should this be necessary they can be assured that they will be well looked after during what is undoubtedly a difficult time.
If you would like to find out more about Oak Underwriting plc you may wish to visit their website at www.oak-underwriting.co.uk.
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