Understand How Your Car Measures Up

The insurance industry gathers and analyzes statistics on the number and cost of Collision and Comprehensive claims for the most popular Canadian models of cars, passenger vans, SUVs and pickup trucks. It also tracks theft claims for these same vehicles – the cost of these claims and how often these cars are stolen. The results give consumers an accurate picture of how theft, collision and other claims affect the cost of auto insurance for particular makes and models of cars.

This year’s edition of “How Cars Measure Up” presents the results for 1994 through 2006 models where at least 1,500 of each of the models were insured between 2002 and 2006. The information comes entirely from actual insurance claims data, collected from most of the car insurance companies in Canada.

How Cars Measure Up - 1994-2006 Model Year
Versions: Excel | PDF (89 pages)

Reading “How Cars Measure Up”

When reading “How Cars Measure Up,” please note that all of the ratings are expressed in relative terms with 100 representing the average in each category. This means a result of 122 is 22% above the average and a result of 87 is 13% below the average. Lower numbers indicate more favourable ratings.

The indexes for AB (Accident Benefits claims) are shown only by colour and do not include numerical values. This is because there are fewer Accident Benefits claims than other types of claims each year, so a numerical index would be misleading.

You can convert the relative indexes into actual frequencies and losses per insured vehicle by using the information shown in the following graphs.  For example, as you can see from the “Car Theft Frequency” graph, Canada-wide in 2006 there were approximately 6 theft claims for every 1,000 insured vehicles. Therefore, a relative index of 150 would mean that, on average, there were approximately 9 thefts for every 1,000 insured vehicles of that make/model/model-year Canada-wide in 2006.

Other things you can do to control your premiums