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Smart Shopper Best Car for a new teenage driver
554 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 7:33 PM
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Replying to: rockylee (Aug 15, 2006 12:08 pm) Side curtain airbags are far superior to not having them if you do get hit in the side. Still, as I said, I wouldn't recommend a small car like a Yaris for a teenager. My son wanted a Mini Cooper when he went to L.A. last year -- he got our 2004 Camry with side airbags instead.
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Replying to: 210delray (Aug 15, 2006 12:57 pm)  These Acura's will make very nice used cars for my kids generation. Rocky |
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Replying to: 210delray (Aug 15, 2006 11:22 am) The car must get up a steep driveway. Another alternative is that she just doesn't get to take her car to Tahoe in the winter. Not that big a loss. Of course, if she wants to go, and I like the friends she is going with, I might let her take my XC90 and I'm REALLY not sure I want her to do that on a separate note, why do you need a larger car for a teen? I am guessing it's more likely that a teen will hit something, rather than be hit. (can someone find me the facts on that?) I completely agree that a car with predictable handling is important for a teen, thus eliminating all the truck-based SUVs, at least. There is data that shows that teens are as safe as you or I when driving along. But that if you add even one teen passenger, they become much less safe (thus the California law that new teen drivers can't be the driver of a vehicle with only other teens or kids, until they are 16 1/2 or so) Thus my comment about removing all the seats but the driver seat
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Replying to: alp8 (Aug 15, 2006 2:12 pm) Fairly inexpensive, dependable, useful for hauling stuff (we all remember college, right?), and not terrible on the gas mileage. |
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No offense, but some of you people are out of your minds. An Audi S4 for a teenage girl? Since when does a car need to be overpowered to keep a young driver out of trouble? Or is the notion that it'll be in the shop so often that she'll never get a chance to crash it? What else now--a Jeep Wrangler?! Yeah, that's smart...what, do we want the kid to tip over, or just have his friends romping around with the top down? I don't think I could even get behind the idea of a Volvo, unless the kid has unlimited funds for repairs. Why not keep it simple? And why does every parent in the United States suddenly feel like they have to buy their kid a brand-new car, or at least one that costs twenty thousand bucks (and where were these parents when I was a kid) to keep them 'safe'? What ever happened to Tauruses, Prisms, Cavaliers and Sentras? Seriously, you don't have to be an open checkbook to keep your kid from being killed on the road...I mean, aren't their chances of injury reduced if they don't have a vehicle constantly at their disposal? OK, enough of my sermon, we've had this discussion ad nauseam already. Of the vehicles mentioned earlier, I like the idea of the Vibe/Matrix the best....reasonbly nice, not expensive, fairly safe, not fast enough for them to do any stupid kid tricks. |
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Replying to: ghulet (Aug 15, 2006 4:09 pm) Please keep my parameters in mind. I realize that not all parents will use the same parameters as I am. Maybe my logic is flawed, that she'lldrive the car for two years, til she heads to college, at which time she'll hand it down to her younger sister, and the college-bound one MAY get something to take to college. She won't need or want a car if she is at NYU, for example. also, my kids are girls - far less likely to engage in stupid pet tricks than are boys I like the Subaru Impreza the best, so far, but this party has only just started. I am sure other folks have good ideas and reasons. Heck, some of my reasoning may be very flawed and I am willing to examine it.
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...if you can do without the awd, take a look at the first 11 or so of these, although personally I'd skip the VW/Audi products because of reliability issues. You can even go back a few years to 2004 and still get cars with good front and side safety ratings, IF you can find examples with side airbags. I wouldn't worry as much about less than stellar rear (whiplash) ratings. Secondly, a larger car is helpful whether you hit something, or someone else hits you. This is also true for single-vehicle crashes, which account for almost half of vehicle occupant fatalities. And for a given size/weight, cars and minivans have lower death rates than SUVS, which in turn have lower death rates than pickups. Check this out. A snippet: Driver deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old, in calendar 2004: Vehicle size / Rate Cars Mini 117 Small 98 Midsize 68 Large 67 Very large 50 Pickups Small 118 Large 100 Very large 104 SUVs Small 68 Midsize 65 Large 56 Very large * *Insufficient exposure for estimating reliable death rates IMO, nothing should be more important than your child's safety. |
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Replying to: alp8 (Aug 15, 2006 4:51 pm) When I was working at a Virginia hospital, we had three young ladies come into the emergency room and they had to be med evaced to hospitals in Richmond and Norfolk. Seems like a 17 yo girl and her two friends were driving a Volvo (old style "the safest car on the market"). The driver was passing a car while heading up a hill on a two-lane rural road. Ran splat into a dump truck. Any young driver is capable of making driving errors due to INEXPERIENCE and poor judgment. For a CLASSIC example, see link title which should be required reading for all parents with driving age children. Personally, I agree with ghulet - it should older and midsized and generally unattractive. And if it is paid for (that is, no payments) you can self insure (no collisiona nd comprehensive) and save substantially on insurance premiums. |
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Replying to: ghulet (Aug 15, 2006 4:09 pm) I remember the "good old days" when the car was a Ford LTD muffler optional or maybe a Chevette. And both were a HUGE improvement over the city bus or the "SLE" (shoe leather express). Ghulet, I have sold about 15 USED cars from my fleet. Five or six of them have been to parents buying them for children. At least two of them never made it to the child as "they wouldn't be caught dead in them." (A three year old car is "not good enough" for a teenager.) Egads. I like the Vibe/Matrix. O |
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...at the risk of sounding like an 'old guy' here (at 37!), I bought my first car, an ugly tank '71 Buick, in 1985, for $450 of my own money and was ELATED to have it...my second car was a $1700 '77 Caprice that my mom bought for my twin and I because we weren't insurable on her new car at the time (a new Porsche 944); it wasn't like my family couldn't buy us cars, it just wasn't an option, people just didn't do that back then, at least not in my town. I wouldn't have dreamt of turning down ANY free car. Apparently things have changed a LOT in twenty years. God, I do sound old. Anywho, back to reality: I understand everyone wants their kids to be in a safe, reliable car. I still say that's perfectly do-able for a lot less than $20k, and without AWD or 4WD (in fact, I think those are more a bad idea unless your climate absolutely dictates), and without paying half a million dollars a year in insurance. Basic rules of thumb, IMO: should be reliable, low-maintenance, safe, economical (good MPG; remember your kid will likely pay for at least SOME of the gas out-of-pocket), something not so nice that you'd freak out if it gets knocked around a bit, nothing fast or fancy (unless you want an egomaniac junior, I'd advise against hand-me-down BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, etc.). By all means, CHECK THE INSURANCE RATES before you buy anything for a teenager. My short list: 03-06 Honda Accord (all have ABS, side airbags); they're 'big enough' to have some metal, small enough to be managable, and four-cylinders (don't get a V6) get great gas mileage. Used under $20k, 03-04s are sometimes under $15k if they can live with a DX or LX. Ford Taurus/Mercury Sable '01-05 (most are under $10k): get good safety ratings, are cheap used, reliable and cheap to fix. Toyota Corolla/Chevrolet-Geo Prism: reliable, economical, newer Corollas (03-06) have good safety ratings. Nissan Sentra, Altima: again, reliable, managable size, reasonably safe, not expensive, good MPG, not too fast. No Civics or Integras, insurance is insane. I think Subarus are fine, though they're not cheap to buy or fix, and do you have a dealer within 50 miles? Same goes for Volvos, and you will never convince me that a sixteen year-old needs a used AWD Volvo that retailed for $40k new.
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