if price were no object, what car would you get a teen driver?

[Anonymous]

I had a 1989 Volvo station wagon in 1999 when I was 16, in the matte powder blue. That was a great kid car - slow, safe, plenty of room for friends! I don't know what I'd get my kids today, what's the equivalent?

[Anonymous]

VW Taurag, BMW x1

[Anonymous]

Honda Civic
Kia Soul
VW bug

[Anonymous]

Tesla

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A rusty used Corolla, so he’d have an incentive to finish school and get a job.

this is OP, and this was basically our plan except that even rusty old corollas aren't cheap nowadays! Also, I was price motivated but I like the way you think

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a 1989 Volvo station wagon in 1999 when I was 16, in the matte powder blue. That was a great kid car - slow, safe, plenty of room for friends! I don't know what I'd get my kids today, what's the equivalent?

the equivalent today is a 2010 rusty old minivan, but I never see kids driving those ...

[Anonymous]

Subaru Forester with every safety feature offered.

[Anonymous]

Toyota Tacoma TRD PRO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a 1989 Volvo station wagon in 1999 when I was 16, in the matte powder blue. That was a great kid car - slow, safe, plenty of room for friends! I don't know what I'd get my kids today, what's the equivalent?

My kids drive my 2004 Saab wagon.

[Anonymous]

I recommend something newer and mid-size, whether a sedan or SUV. Smaller cars do less well in collisions with larger vehicles, simply due to their reduced mass. But, a larger and heavier vehicle may be less agile and have longer braking distances in an emergency, be more difficult to park, and be less fuel efficient. Older cars lack relatively recently-introduced important and effective safety features such as automated emergency braking, which can be life-saving if a newer (or indeed any) driver is momentarily inattentive or is caught by surprise in a situation where immediate and maximum brake application is called for. Additionally, new vehicles benefit from advances in safety cage/cell crash modeling and from improvements in metallurgy. That is, newer cars can be safer by virtue of improved designs and due to their fabrication with stronger structural components.

It's common but probably short-sighted to provide younger new drivers with old, small, cheap cars when what they really should have are the safest vehicles their parents can afford, even if the parents drive the older cars in the family. Those safest cars are almost always going to be the newest ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recommend something newer and mid-size, whether a sedan or SUV. Smaller cars do less well in collisions with larger vehicles, simply due to their reduced mass. But, a larger and heavier vehicle may be less agile and have longer braking distances in an emergency, be more difficult to park, and be less fuel efficient. Older cars lack relatively recently-introduced important and effective safety features such as automated emergency braking, which can be life-saving if a newer (or indeed any) driver is momentarily inattentive or is caught by surprise in a situation where immediate and maximum brake application is called for. Additionally, new vehicles benefit from advances in safety cage/cell crash modeling and from improvements in metallurgy. That is, newer cars can be safer by virtue of improved designs and due to their fabrication with stronger structural components.

It's common but probably short-sighted to provide younger new drivers with old, small, cheap cars when what they really should have are the safest vehicles their parents can afford, even if the parents drive the older cars in the family. Those safest cars are almost always going to be the newest ones.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A rusty used Corolla, so he’d have an incentive to finish school and get a job.

this is OP, and this was basically our plan except that even rusty old corollas aren't cheap nowadays! Also, I was price motivated but I like the way you think

When my kid got his license, I tossed to him the keys to the Toyota pickup in which I first brought him home from the hospital. He turned his nose up at this; an old stick shift didn’t meet his standards. So he didn’t drive places for a while.

[Anonymous]

Something used, boring, and reliable, and with a good safety rating. Cars are considered to be safer than SUVs or minivans, due to the lower center of gravity, so that would be a preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Something used, boring, and reliable, and with a good safety rating. Cars are considered to be safer than SUVs or minivans, due to the lower center of gravity, so that would be a preference.

This is older thinking. SUVs are the safer vs sedan, so long as the car has electronic stability control, which became
mandatory at some point (2012?). Paraphrasing the studies of suv vs sedans in crashes, “the vehicle type is more important than the crash test rating in predicting survival.”

[Anonymous]

My son is 12, but will get my current car when he turns 16. As in, he gets to use and maintain it . He will be gifted it officially when he graduates college. It’s a 2020 4runner….so should be about 10 years old when it becomes officially his. Not a bad start in life IMO!