The most & least expensive vehicles to insure

Insurance never fails to surprise. Even though car insurance rates are increasingly driven by databases and automated number crunching, every now and then the industry pulls a rabbit out of its hat.

Take Insure.com’s newest list of the most and least expensive vehicles to insure. There were no surprises at the top: high-performance sports cars like the Nissan GT-R and Dodge Viper are there, plus theft favorites like the Cadillac Escalade. And you’d think the least expensive would be large, heavy safe cars driven by middle-aged parents who are obeying speed laws. That’s true for the most part.

Then there’s the Smart Fortwo, the smallest car available. It’s a two-passenger coupe or convertible. Smart says it achieves fuel efficiency of 41 mpg on the highway – but I can’t imagine wanting to drive such a dot on the highway with SUVs shooting past me. Nonetheless, it’s one of the cheapest cars to insure, in large part because it’s easy to repair: Mercedes-Benz provides pre-painted doors to body shops that simply need to be bolted on.

Do you own a vehicle that’s one of the most or least expensive to insure? Do you wish you did? Tell us about it.