Been my experiance that if'n they know its for a car they're gonna require the insurance, I know of no laws that say you gotta have anything except liability, I did get into a bind a couple years ago with the credit union saying they where gonna call a loan cuzz I had $1000 deduct and they wanted $500 deduct, cured that problem by handing them a check for the balance and then handed em a withdrawal slip.
Far as a personel loan I agree with Techinspector, cept that even with a personel loan they are gonna want some kind of collateral ...