That would have been a good starting car. He also had a Chevy Celebrity which I didn’t get to drive because I didn’t get to learn how to drive stick in driver’s ed (go figure) and a Ford LTD wagon that he said that he would let me drive ’some weekend’.

BTW, mine was a I6 ‘66 mustang that I had to overhaul to get running, but I loved it because of it.

It’s cool, it would survive a nuclear strike and it’s so heavy and slow that if you crash it you would have eventually crashed anything…

On crashing everything though, I live in the Netherlands and it has a very high population density, which means a lot of cars are on the road everywhere you go, eventhough moving about in a car is very expensive here due to many causes (that mostly come down to insanely high taxes).

Getting your driving license involves a theoretical exam and on average 35 one-hour lessons by a driving school, the age limit is 18 years and speed limits are carefully maintained by one gazillion speedcameras on most roads.

Still, a couple of cars hitting each other every now and then is inevitable. One of my cousins crashed 3 beater GTIs in maybe 2 years (one involved a multiple flip/roll over), and with all the luck in the world escaped unscathed. It’s not just him either, many people I know have already crashed once or twice.

I’m 22 now, and I don’t have the illusion it can’t happen to me when I start spending a lot more time on the roads in the next year or so, although especially in pedestrian areas (another thing that is very different here then in the US, since roads are generally less wide and overall space a lot more scarce, small children can appear after every parked car on the side) I deliberately try to drive cautiously.

A manual transmission would be a plus, as would steering wheel audio controls (more of a nice little luxury/convenience). Indeed, the V6 family sedans today are far too powerful for many teenagers. The four cylinders are quite capable as it is. As long as the car can safely keep pace with traffic (not 100 MPH traffic, but normal highway traffic), it would be fine for my choice.

I got my license three years ago, at age 16, and I shared cars with my parents. There was no “third car”. Some of my friends received brand new or gently used cars, most of which were very nice (Acura TL Type S, Audi S4 Avant, etc.).

I took a few unique driver education courses; they didn’t. I was one of the only kids who was good at maintaining a safe distance from other cars, and being aware of the other cars around me. Most kids tried to go as fast as possible, especially on the highway; heck, one kid’s parent encouraged the kid to go 100 MPH and over (I was in the car when this happened), with the excuse of “keeping pace with traffic” as the rationale for his actions.

I’m still petrified of getting a ticket, so I really do my best to stick to the speed limit and drive sensibly. And I try to avoid serious conversations with passengers in the car, or any use of my cell phone. Heck, when the driving gets crazy, the radio goes off, and I try to focus as best I can on the road. Speeding is not worth the risks, nor the cost (of the extra fuel used).

Kids don’t *have* to get cars as soon as they receive their licenses. Graduated licensing can be a good thing, if properly enforced by parents (limited number of passengers, restricted driving hours and conditions). My parents phased in my driving privileges gradually, and it was a smart move.

And I’ve seen people talking on phones, and even eating, while driving stick. Don’t even get me started about fitting too many passengers into cars, not wearing seat belts, or doing stupid things that ruin good cars.

My son is now 18 and seems to possess the wisdom his old man lacked (at the time)He drives a 1992 Explorer, very sanely and safely. I began teaching him how to drive in the large parking lots of the local university (during summer sessions when they were empty) when he was 14. I made sure he had 200 hours of left-seat time in my Honda Accord before he got his license….

Safest car for a young driver would be any 4 cyl Accord or its like, with an I4….reliable, safe, good handling

These days it takes ambitious education, not an old fashioned “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” attitude, that will make a kid competitive. If there simply isn’t money in the family then that is a different issue, but a parent withholding money to teach their kid a lesson on independence is a mistake.

Back on topic. My first car was a hand-me-down red ‘99 Toyota Solara V6. Horrible car for teenagers. It looked fairly racy and was fast, but had absolutely terrible handling limits and no steering feel. Very easy to overwhelm the chassis with the engine. Girls liked it though.

My first new car is a 2008 Honda Fit Sport, which I think is a great choice. Slow, efficient, reliable, roomy.. and the seats fold down to make a bed!

My neice, then age 20, was temporarily living with us before going to university. After buying a 1990’s Oldsmobile 88 with air bags and ABS, which we and she and her mother thought would be about as safe as she could be, she found out that even one inattentive moment can change a life, or end a life.

She denies it, but we think she was perhaps putting a CD into her new stereo which she had just had installed the week before. Two miles from our house, she skidded on a dry two lane road and hit a tree just behind her front left wheel. She also had a bad habit of accelerating hard, which I surmise she had to be doing at the time she lost control, since it was 1/4 mile from a side road and stop sign which our house is on.

She was trapped in the car for about an hour, while EMS tried to extracate her. Her left leg was through the floor and on the ground, her right leg was smashed and squashed under the steering column, broken in both the lower and upper leg areas (lower leg compound fracture – that means her bone was sticking out of her leg). We were there within 5 minutes of the accident and witnessed the bravery of the EMS men cutting the B-pillar near her head (she could not be moved away from it) by putting his gloved hand between her head and the multi-thousand pounds of pressure on the metal cutting scissors. One slip, and the EMS guy could have lost a hand or fingers.

Once she was extracated (vertically out of the now convertible-ized 4 door sedan) they got her to the hospital where a lot of painful operations, including metal rods being put in her right leg. Also, her face will never look the same; scars. There was plastic surgery, muscle grafts, physical therapy, you name it. It literally took her almost a year to be able to walk with a walker. Her mother came over from Scotland, taking off work and putting her own life on hold, in order to help my wife and I cope.

Finally, after getting well enough to leave, she decided to skip college and leave to go live in a European country (though she could not speak the language), and while there, the still open wound on her lower right leg allowed a virus into her body, which travelled to her brain.

She got ill, her brain swelled up permanently damaging it, and after months of recuperation, she was airlifted back to Scotland. She cannot feed herself well, cannot walk, can barely talk, is unable to look after her own hygiene, and essentially has now got NO future and neither has her mother.

So, drive careful, you hear? People love you and want you to stay alive. One moment of inattention can result in a permanently changed life, or an end to life (and if you kill someone else but not yourself, just how will you feel?)

I guess this goes for everyone. I’m EXTREMELY sick of seeing idiot drivers everywhere I go.

Put down the cell phone; you can’t babble and drive well at the same time. Put down the food and drink. Stop tailgating. Stop running red lights and stop signs. Stop signs are to be stopped at, not just used as yield signs. Try driving the speed limit for a change. Get out of the fast lane if you are going to pace the driver in the slow lane. Pay 100% attention to your driving! And be courteous.

Lemme clarify the situation…

i was at a party…had way too much Sprite….i was driving down M-59 in MI and was about to piss myself, so i went 80, in an area where the speed limit was 65…i got off at the soonest exit and went to a gas station and relieved myself. It was the scariest situation I’ve ever been in, and will NEVER do it again because it was terrifying. I’m not trying to justify what I did, I just want you to know the circumstances.

I wasn’t about to pee on the leather…it’s a lease and i have to return it…

If you’re willing to do 30 MPH over the limit at night in a 180 HP car, there’s no reason to believe that you, or someone like you, wouldn’t go quite a lot faster if you had access to a more powerful car.

The lowest highway limit is 55 MPH. Have you seen what happens to cars that crash at 90 MPH? They’re reduced to parts, along with the drivers. Clearly you shouldn’t be a in car that attains that speed so easily.

There’s another almost universal teenage trait in play here: an underappreciation of consequence. To you, the worst thing that could happen to you is your mom’s disapproval. That’s both trivial and temporary. When you’re piloting around a car, the list of consequences with long-term effects increases dramatically.

Here’s a small consequence: wadding up your car. And here’s a big one: wadding up someone else’s car, with them inside it. Ignoring the likelihood that the ensuing litigation would bankrupt your family, and the possibility of the death of that party, you personally could receive an injury that would annoy you until the day you die. Even injuries as seemingly trivial as whiplash or a broken ankle can be life-altering, as would your personal guilt if someone else suffered from them.

And then there’s the impact of losing your license on your earnings potential, as well as the dramatic rise in the cost and ease of procuring insurance.

None of these consequences are trivial, and despite the fact that you’re under your mother’s wing now, you’d have to face them head-on. It’s hard enough to get by without these burdens; why risk adding them to your life?

The purpose of all this isn’t to lecture you, it’s to point out that there’s often a lot more at stake than is often immediately apparent, particularly in our litigious society. Dwelling on this fact would probably make you too petrified to drive, but the seed should still be there in the back of your mind.

He’s just retarded. I’m not. Ya, I’ve done a couple dozen miles over the speed limit-on the express way-at 3:00am, but i’m not dumb enough to take my car that far. I’d rather die than face my mom after that….

This is why:

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Columns/articleId=124526

Everything was just fine, right up until it wasn’t. Here’s a quote from that kid:

“I do sometimes make bad decisions but I am young and I do drive safe and I will not endanger the lives of others.”

Most kids probably wouldn’t do what he did, but the point is minimize the temptation. The line between safe and unsafe is so easy to cross even without it, so what parent would poke at fate?

i turned 16 last year (17 now) and my mom decided that i was responsible enough to handle a new car. I have a job earning almost $15 an hour and need a car for school and work. I love cars, and so does she, so she let me decide the car…but it had to be less than $25,000….and have a cheap lease. I decided on a Pontiac Solstice. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it has a stick. I’m in heaven. I’ve never gotten a ticket, never texted while driving, never even EATEN in my car…

it all depends on the kid behind the wheel.

The question is, if you give the kid a car capable of a certain feature, will they exploit it, or passively benefit from it? Which is to say: Would the knowledge that the car has airbags make the kid driver faster? What about enough power to get out of its own way, or handling that isn’t terror-inducing? Or performance training?

That’s all kid-dependent. Some kids will have the ‘conservative gene’ expressed above and some won’t. Which vehicle you buy should depend on which kind of kid you have.

And there’s another factor to balance: the other fools on the road. Even if the kid’s personal driving habits would suffer in a more capable car, such a car may still be preferable to a lesser model that would fare badly in a crash, or be unable to avoid one.

For most kids, I’d favor large, heavy, family sedans from 1995-2000 with lots of airbags, an automatic, poor straight-line performance, and low handling limits. FWD is preferable because it promotes understeer.

For conservative kids, I’d move to something smaller, lighter, and with a manual transmission and RWD, but nothing more than a 4-cylinder.

The car on which I learned was a maroon Olds Cutlass Cierra station wagon from 1995. It was 3300 lbs, FWD and around 150 HP, with forgiving handling and a soft throttle. Very easy to drive and a great choice by my parents.

It also had a sensation of speed, which is more than I can say for their 2004 Camry. That car combines serenity with terrible handling. It’s so unobtrusive that you can go 80+ without even noticing, and unlike the Euro sedans, the suspension isn’t designed to cope with evasive maneuvers at that speed. That’s one reason I favor older and less-refined American cars for new drivers; they’ll let you know that they don’t like going fast.

Jordan Tenenbaum :
March 21st, 2008 at 4:11 pm

An old Volvo 240, of course!

Regardless, they don’t get anything above 160hp.

My first car at 16was an 88 Chevy Corsica. That sounds dull, but this one had the V6 with something like 130 hp, 160-170 torque, a 3-speed auto, and weirdly fat tires. The gas pedal was almost binary, so I would smoke the tires from every start. It was terrible in the winter, and my first winter I spun it 360 on a deserted highway, while going straight. It had a top speed of 90 due to the transmission, but it would get there right quick. Killed by neglect.

My Second was a manual 1.8L 94 Protégé LX with 120 hp. It was slower off the line, but would do 110mph with 4 idiot dudes in it. I loved how small the car was, and how I could do power slides straight out of Mario Kart on the SNES, fwd be damned. What a car. Hit by a drunk in a Camero.

Third Car was a 91 Tempo with 95 hp and 3 spd auto. This car was so slow, it put a stop to my hoonage. I went received no tickets for over a year! A very comfortable ride until the frame completely rusted out and one of the rear wheels tilted out at over 25 degrees, making straight line driving very hard.

Forth was a 97 Protégé Automatic 1.5L with 90 HP. This car was slow as hell, and the transmission sucked. It also looked like a Neon mated to a 2nd gen Saturn. However, it had the most direct steering I have ever felt in any car. You literally pointed the top of ther steering wheel where you wanted to go and the car followed. The interior was ridiculously roomy for a car of this size too. Hit by a Nissan XTerra that ran a red light red light.

Current car is an 03 Protégé ES with 130hp 135 torque and autostick(sorry, I’m lame).
Steering isn’t as direct as the other 2 Proteges, but the suspension is very ridged and the twin trapezoidal rear suspension is fun. Also, the seats are more comfortable than anything in my house.

still, it was insanely reliable and saw me through my senior year in high school and schlepped back and forth to college from new york to kentucky for four years.

i don’t miss that car at all.