All insurance companies will ramp up the premium when a provisional licence is converted to a full licence because a learner is very unlikely to crash whilst a parent is in the passenger seat!

Co-Op do a black box insurance policy which can significantly reduce premiums-if you can tolerate the Big Brother monitering.

There really isn't any way round the problem. Even a group 2-3 car is going to be very expensive to insure for a teenager with no driving record.

Impossible to give a definitive answer on the reliability score without knowing the budget.

One trick I have found with insurance is that 2 valve engines are often significantly cheaper to insure than 4 Valve engines of the same displacement-whilst only offering little loss in real world performance.

PSA and Renault made 2 valve petrols up to about 2000ish. Simple engines, cheap parts and as easy to maintain a post-carburettor era car can get. The lemons from the factory will have been scrapped by now. The ones that are left should be fundamentally sound if well maintained.

I'm told it can reduce premiums a bit if the parents are named as drivers on the policy, although the young person must be named as the main driver if (s)jhe is going to do most of the mileage.

A couple of cheap cars as claimed by Uswitch are the fiesta, peugeot 106 or the polo. Basically anything that has cheap parts for repair.

A good insurer to go with would be someone like Acorn Insurance who specialise in Young person insurance www.acorninsure.co.uk/car-insurance/young-driver-i.../

It's becoming more prevalent these days that specialist insurers come out on top if you fit into a particular niche..