Although not a completely stagnant market, selling new motorcars in the UK these days is hard work. Combating this, one very successful way that car manufacturers have found to attract new buyers to the motorcar market in the UK is to offer the first year's car insurance completely free with the purchase of a new motorcar.

Wonderful, but before you jump in and buy that new car, consider this:

- if you are under the age of 25, while the first year of your motor insurance is going to be completely 'free' (i.e. paid for as part of a sales gimmick by the car manufacturer), subsequent years won't be! So, before you buy that brand new SUV, 4x4 or sports car, you may want to enquire what the insurance will cost you subsequent of year 1 - otherwise you may well find you have the nicest looking car sitting on a car driveway in your neighborhood!

- if you are going to buy the car using one of the car manufacturers' payment hire-purchase payment plans, read the fine print to see if you are contractually required to use the same car insurance provider throughout the term of the hire-purchase period. If so, you may want to reconsider the value of buying your new car this way as there is a very good chance you can find cheaper car insurance elsewhere.

- remember that even if you are the perfect driver and have no accidents or need to call upon the car insurance company's services, it is going to have no bearing on the insurance quote for year 2. This is the case because you'll not be credited with any 'no claims bonus' for that period.

- if you decide to go ahead with the deal, check carefully to see what the car insurance exclusions are as, in most cases, the car insurance being provided for the first year is fairly basic and won't cover you for a number of circumstances and events that you may automatically have assumed they would.

There is little doubt that the lure of a year's free car insurance policy as a marketing tool has been extremely successful, but faced with this and the opportunity to try and negotiate some free extras or upgrades with your new motorcar, you may very well want to consider taking the option of negotiating for the free extras or upgrades because in the long run the free motorcar insurance being given to you by your car salesman is going to be anything but 'free' and will almost certainly end up costing you far more than if you had arranged the car insurance yourself online.

About the author:

Joseph Kenny is the webmaster of the insurance site http://www.insure121.com/ where you will find information, news and links to the leading providers of car insurance in the UK.