Teenage Automobile
September 22, 2024 9:29 AM   Subscribe

My daughter is turning sixteen. We will be getting her a vehicle. What advice do you have on the type of vehicle we get and how we should finance it?. Safety is our number one priority. Her commute to high school and cross country practice is on high speed roads with plenty of accidents. Prices are through the roof on both new and used cars. Is buying or leasing better? Any negotiation tips? Curious how others have navigated this part of their teenagers lives and any pro tips for keeping parental worry under control. This whole thing is nerve racking.
posted by jasondigitized to Travel & Transportation (21 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Get a hybrid from Toyota or Honda. They are efficient and safe. Teens are more likely to have accidents with other kids in the car, so many parents set rules about that. Texting and driving is incredibly dangerous, talk about it; I don't know if there are systems to prevent it. Consider having her work to earn gas and insurance funds.
posted by theora55 at 9:59 AM on September 22 [3 favorites]


1. Put off purchasing a car as long as possible
2. Teenagers should not get a new car. If you must get another vehicle, parents should get a new car and kids should get a hand-me-down
3. If you must finance a car, you should be right-side-up on day 1. You want to be made whole by the insurance payment should your teen total the vehicle
4. I think leasing is a bad idea if you don’t intend to buy the vehicle at the end of the lease term. You will be forced to pay for scratch and dent damage at lease return time that you might choose to live with in a vehicle you own
5. Did you really need another vehicle? $500/mo in transit and Uber goes a long way in urban locations. Did you consider e-bikes as a supplemental vehicle?

My daughter is 17. I personally walk and take transit to places more now that she is driving. I still drop her off places if I need the car or she doesn’t want to pay for parking. She complains, but it works. I am considering an e-bike for myself as a supplemental vehicle.

Regarding worry. Where I live the kids have their learners for a year so I had to drive with her. Being in the car is terrifying, I feared for an accident a few times, I would adrenaline dump after a drive. She did improve and days between incidents got further apart.

I stopped worrying ironically after her first accident. She put a $2200 hole in my bumper 2 hours after getting her license to drive independently. I made her find repair shops, pay the deductible, do the claim, etc. She learned from this.
posted by shock muppet at 10:04 AM on September 22 [22 favorites]


No kids, so I can't speak to the last part.

But you're already finding it nerve-racking and I see you're in Texas. So you're probably going to feel some pressure either from her or from other parents or both to get a ginormous truck or truck-based SUV. One reason not to do that is that their frontal visibility is terrible and your daughter will be at increased risk of running over a kid and ruining her own life in the process. Also, *EVERYTHING* is very safe nowadays.

You want a boring, boring, boring, underpowered beige sedan/hatchback. Something new enough to have a backup camera; at that point pretty much any vehicle is going to be radically safe compared to the cars you or I drove at that age.

Corolla, Civic, Elantra, Versa/Sentra, crap like that. Late years of things like the Fit would really be ideal. Maybe an Impreza but eh no snow and they really don't come underpowered enough. Soul if you can get one without the easy-steal feature.

Plain. Beige. As close to underpowered as you can get these days. Utterly soulless. When you're shopping, you want to see her hopes and dreams die when she lays eyes on it, and for her to sit down in it and wonder how she can increase shareholder value.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:15 AM on September 22 [51 favorites]


I would not lease the car. There is a high priority of cosmetic damage and/or bumper or side mirror damage in the first year. You don't want to be in a panic about how much extra you owe the car company at the end of the lease.

Similarly pay attention to feature that increase safety and visibility. Absolutely yes on back up cameras (should be easy to find). Also it should have some kind of blind spot alert. Given that a lot of the scrapes happen while parking, pay attention to visibility in the corners. Proximity alerts are helpful although I don't know how common they are.
posted by metahawk at 11:07 AM on September 22 [2 favorites]


One thing you might consider is vehicles offering Restricted Driving Mode (e.g., Ford's MyKey system), which allows you to restrict the vehicle's top speed, typically by having different programmable keys. They may also permit you to limit things like radio volume. They're designed for parental control, and offered on a lot of different vehicles (for example, I think most Ford vehicles offer them, and they're standard on a number of Volvos such as the S60, though by no means limited to those two manufacturers).

You really shouldn't have trouble finding vehicles with a backup camera (unless you go back a lot of model years) since they're required by law as of 2018. Other modern safety systems, like collision warning and cross-traffic alerts are widely offered as well (over half the marketed vehicles have standard or offer optional some combination of them in recent model years). The overarching term is ADAS (for Advanced Driver Assistance System, pronounced like eh-dass), which covers everything from drowsiness detection to collision warning, lane keep assist, and automatic braking systems. It's a big area of competition among the automakers to add/improve these features, though you should be careful to teach your daughter NOT to trust them. My company tests these things and they can be surprisingly unreliable, though certainly having a system with some chance of bailing her out is better than nothing.

I'd suggest actually looking at an (older, e.g., 2021ish) luxury marque because usually it's the luxury vehicles that acquire the safety systems first. This will of course mean you'd pay a bit more, but finding a used vehicle with these types of systems equipped may not be as easy if you only mainly consider price. In other words, a randomly chosen 2021 S60 is more likely to have more safety features equipped than a randomly chosen 2021 Accord.

Agreed with the others on no leasing. One piece of advice I've heard often is to go to your bank or credit union and see what kind of terms they would offer you on an auto loan. It gives you more leverage to walk into a dealer with your own financing. Given that you are giving this vehicle to a teenager, you should probably go into things with the mindset that the vehicle will not survive this experience unscathed. God forbid she does anything to total it, but at the very least expect a few scrapes and dents.
posted by axiom at 11:58 AM on September 22


Think about how long you need the car to last. If she's going to college, she may be 22 before she has a full-time year-round job and can afford to buy her own car. Buying a car that can last 6 years or more may be a better financial decision than buying a car that will only last 2-3 years and then having to get another one at that point. (Unless you think your family will be in a better financial position in a couple of years or your daughter will be making enough money from summer or after-school jobs to make a significant contribution to the cost of a car.)

Let's say you want the car to last 6 years. Check out cars for sale near you online and see what the low end of the price range looks like for cars that are from about 2015 or newer. Focus on small to medium models that get good gas mileage and good ratings for reliability and safety. Pick out a few that don't seem to have any serious issues and use something like this Car Life Expectancy Calculator to get a rough idea whether they'll last as long as you need them to. Adjust the age of cars you're looking at if necessary.

If you expect your daughter to drive the car as long as it keeps running, take the prices of some different cars and divide them by the number of years the life expectancy calculator tells you each one will last to see which ones are better deals. Or if you expect her to drive it only until she can afford to buy herself something cooler, divide the prices by 6 years or however long you think that will be. If you can afford the payments on a new or almost new car for a few years and you think your daughter (or someone in your family) will be willing to keep driving that car until it dies, that may get you your best value in terms of years of use for money spent. It would also mean your daughter would have a car that was paid off and still running reliably during her first few years of living on her own, which could really help her out a lot. (But she could easily end up moving to a city where she doesn't need a car, or to a place where she needs all-wheel drive, or she could decide that one of her top priorities in life is having a much cooler car than that.)

Sites like Carfax will tell you if the price for the car you're looking at is a good value or not. If it's not, don't buy unless the owner or dealer is willing to come down on the price. If you're buying a used car, get it checked out by a mechanic first. If there are any issues, get a rough idea from the mechanic what it would cost to fix them and negotiate that much of a reduction in the price. If you're looking at new cars, use online sources like Edmunds to find out what the dealer invoice price is to help you figure out if you're getting a good deal.

Not all cars are comfortable for everyone to drive. Especially if your daughter is shorter or taller than average, make sure she test drives any car you're considering thoroughly enough to be sure it works for her.
posted by Redstart at 12:01 PM on September 22


No lease, try to pay for as much of it up-front as you can. I have found a couple of cars that I was comfortable with for $12k.

Get quotes on insurance before you get serious about any of the cars you're looking at. You might think that a certain car is a good deal and within your budget but if the insurance ends up being $300/month, that won't be the case.

Get way more insurance coverage than you think you need because chances are very high that they will wreck that car in the next couple of years and you'll be glad that you'll have money to buy a new one if it gets totaled. And remember, "totaled" can happen even in a very minor wreck. Also get lots of liability insurance because chances are that when they wreck, they'll wreck someone else's car too.

Reddit's r/whatcarshouldIbuy is a great place to learn about what cars are good and what to stay away from (even though a lot of the comments are anecdotal: "I have an X and it's great", you can see what the majority of people think after reading it for a while.)

As for the worry, have your kid drive with you as much as possible before they strike out on their own. My kid drove for a couple of years before heading out without me (didn't get her license until 17) and, while I'll say that I definitely worried a bit, I knew that she was a good driver and would probably be ok. So that kept the worrying down to the usually amount I have about her all the time.
posted by dawkins_7 at 12:02 PM on September 22 [1 favorite]


You know your daughter better than us, but thinking about who teenagers are and their specific needs and concerns, to me it seems like an ideal teen car would be:

- easy to see out of: as a new driver you have not developed a good sense of what is around or behind you yet

- easy to load and unload: a hatchback, wagon or van allows for simpler access at a reasonable height, as well as the simplicity of being able to see what is in the back without needing to open the trunk of a sedan or the tailgate of a pickup

- easy to drive and control without looking at a screen: ideally you’d want all tactile controls with no screen at all other than the radio display and a clock, but if this is unavailable, you’ll want at minimum non-screen controls for the seats, the mirrors, the steering wheel, the climate control and AM/FM sound systems

- available with a manual transmission if she’s interested: in inexpensive cars, manuals are far more common than you might expect, and learning to drive on a manual might make her understanding of the mechanics of what the car is doing and why at any given time better than it might be otherwise; it’s also useful later in life if you drive overseas, where manuals are often the default

- cheap to maintain and repair: just about every teen’s car incurs some sort of damage in some way during their first few years of driving, and your daughter will absolutely feel awful about any damage she personally causes, so it’s worth looking for the most basic, parts-available-at-a-junkyard vehicles out there

- not just cheap to insure, but also suitable for the level of risk she wants to be exposed to: there won’t be a way around the high cost of teen car insurance but fundamentally, the less she drives, the less risk there is; it’s worth talking as a family about whether your mutual expectations of her driving habits align with your lifestyles and schedules, and whether she may in fact be happy to just use the car on weekends or on vacation for the first few months or year as she becomes a more competent driver instead of making her a daily commuter right away, as she may fear you want her to become

- suitable for her physical (and mental) comfort: the car needs to fit the size and shape she is, and she is still growing, so while a bigger car might seem safer to you as an adult, it may be that a smaller car is better for her ability to reach the pedals, see out the windows and see other low-to-the-ground obstacles like pets, small children and cyclists, all of which she may be worried about harming

- aesthetically imperfect: her knowing that the car is safe and functional but also that it doesn’t matter too much financially to her parents if there’s another small ding from a shopping cart in the door or a scratch on the hubcap may help her develop a good sense of perspective about what kinds of problems are minor, worrying or catastrophic

- accessibly adaptable because of its imperfections: finding her a car with some annoying, clunky or awkward design features will help her take ownership of the car as an imperfect object you want her to customize so it can work for her practically and emotionally; the act of putting a few old plastic bins in the trunk to keep the groceries separate from the emergency kit, or sticking a bumper sticker from a cult-favorite record store she loves on the back, makes the car mean something to her and inspire her to drive as well as she can in an “I really like this car and want to take care of it so it supports me in my life” way rather than in a “I have to take care of this very expensive car and cannot ever make any mistakes in it” way

- similar to the car she learns to drive in: if she is taking driving lessons in a small sedan or wagon, it's worth considering a similar-sized car to help her transfer the muscle-memory parts of her use of that vehicle to her own

- common enough to be easily researchable by her independently: this seems obvious, but a car with many thousands of other drivers will have active forums, Youtube tutorials and a ton of documentation she use to help her find out if problems she notices are shared by others, a real reassurance to a new driver

Looking further to the future, the car might also:

- theoretically be able to accompany her to college if she studies away from home: college students routinely find themselves looking for ways to access the out-of-town big-box store, the local state park or the big city for an airport or a trip home, and both you and your daughter may want her to be able to work or live off-campus in ways that public transit doesn’t support

- theoretically be able to either contain a bike or support the installation of a bike rack: even if she’s not a cyclist, being able to both use a bike and get it across a long distance (for example, if she bikes around campus in college but wants to take it home or to a distant trailhead) allows her to get one at home, bring it to college, and travel with it

All of this together makes me think of two kinds of cars:

1) basic hatchbacks like the two-door Toyota Yaris, the four-door Nissan Note Versa and the four-door Chevy Spark (here’s a Chevy Spark on Craigslist)

2) compact vans like the Ford Transit Connect and the Nissan NV200 (here’s a Ford Transit Connect on Craigslist)

While a normal sedan would do much of what I suggest above, both hatchbacks and compact vans do all of these things, and are also visibly distinct in form (an advantage in a full parking lot), serve all of the specific utility cases a teen and young adult might have (commuting to school or work, running errands, and making the occasional longer trip a few hours away) without being a huge SUV, are quite cheap to purchase, insure and fuel compared to the average compact-SUV-style car these days, are boring enough to sometimes be found in good condition in both government auctions and fleet/rental-car sales, and are common enough that parts availability is good, especially for anything from a domestic automaker that’s had a long run as a particular model.

Finally, I wonder how much it would help you all ease into this with more confidence and positivity, and maybe even some joy, by getting a simpler and cheaper car that still feels right to her, but following that up with setting aside pretty significant time and money to be used for doing enjoyable and useful car-related things together with her, like attending a defensive-driving course, taking a car-repair class at a local community college or technical school, researching simple safety upgrades like stick-on blind-spot mirrors, a glovebox road map and an easy-to-use emergency kit, and planning a mini road trip after her first six months behind the wheel using a nice recreational atlas. Maybe there’s a fun local community of owners of the same model you both can check out, too.

Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 12:32 PM on September 22 [5 favorites]


Safety is our number one priority. Her commute to high school and cross country practice is on high speed roads with plenty of accidents.

In that case, have you considered whether riding the schoolbus or public transit could be a solution for her? The data show that riding the bus is resoundingly safer than driving a car (literally 66x safer in one study). And that's just for the average driver, not a new teen driver (even worse than a regular driver) or a schoolbus (even safer than a regular bus).

Also young people nowadays do not have the same norms around personal car ownership or car culture as young Americans in the 20th century did, though naturally this varies from place to place and youth subculture to subculture.
posted by splitpeasoup at 1:01 PM on September 22 [7 favorites]


A few years ago my friend bought his daughter a car with manual transmission in part to reduce, if not eliminate, the possibility of her texting and driving.
posted by hhc5 at 1:05 PM on September 22 [8 favorites]


Find the oldest model of car you consider safe and buy the highest mileage version that feels sustainable for the amount of time you'd like it to be usable. Ideally it'll have a few dents in it already.

College-age Cocoa just got their first car (split cost with parents) but it was their job to research vehicles, price and pay for insurance, and handle the car buying process -- an adult was present as part of the bargaining element. We definitely added experience and suggestions from the sidelines, but given the dangers of car-driving as a teen, for us a big part of car ownership is showing they have the maturity to handle all aspects of it, not just the ability to turn a key and press a pedal.

They ended up in a very high mileage (150k+) 2019 Subaru found on FB marketplace. When they were a new driver, they took crash prevention training (4 hrs) which reduced their insurance, and they'll probably do a winter driving training, too. They also proactively decided to use an app from the insurance company that tracks their speed and acceleration (and of course texting!) in exchange for lower rates.

Regarding parental worry ... When your kids are teens you start to realize how much your geographic area, neighbors, school system, etc. are going to start influencing them. We live someplace where public transportation is pretty great for teens, where safety is valued and codified (seat belts, # of under 18s allowed in the car with teen drivers, high standards for no drinking and driving, etc.), and where there are a lot of things to do besides drive around. Where I grew up it was the exact opposite. A lot of kids died in cars where I grew up. Driving fast. Driving drunk. Driving to impress other people. Driving bored. Driving tired.

I'm grateful my parents were both very good drivers and good teachers. They drove a lot, in a lot of conditions, in a lot of places, and shared what they were doing, why they were doing it. Driving well -- alertly, skillfully, assertively, politely -- was a badge of honor in our family. These days new drivers are required to take more classroom and road hours training than when I got my license. I think it helps. But I still think you need to put in months of driving training with your kids (assuming you are also a skillful, confident driver). They need to practice in changing conditions (of weather, of traffic, of the car, of passengers). They need to practice on different roads, different speeds, different volumes of traffic. Definitely take a crash avoidance course together if you can. They're great fun and possibly lifesaving.

Beyond that, there's a certain amount of worry that will always be there. No matter how good and responsible a driver your child is, there are conditions and situations beyond their control.
posted by cocoagirl at 1:55 PM on September 22 [6 favorites]


You might not want to take the Car Life Expectancy Calculator cited above as gospel. It tells me my car should last another 104 years…(probably because I have an old car with low mileage).
posted by Hex Wrench at 7:54 PM on September 22


If you’re looking for safe, Subaru is probably the way to go. Bonus points is that it’s underpowered as long as you don’t get a turbo model, but the CVT is responsive so it’s not sluggish. They just aren’t good cars for racing and such. (I replaced a 2013 Honda Fit with a 2018 Subaru Outback, which was worth about triple what the Fit was, and my insurance went down. My boss, who used to own an insurance agency, said that’s due to how much safer the Subaru is. This was confirmed by the insurance agent in the office next door.) Also - do NOT lease, and buying something used is probably your best bet.
posted by azpenguin at 9:07 PM on September 22


You could consider installing one of those devices that breathalizes the driver's blood alcohol level, and won't let the ignition start if the driver has been drinking. That would really increase safety.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:46 PM on September 22 [1 favorite]


I’ve been looking at this site for safety ratings:

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks

Also liked whatcar.com’s reliability survey:

https://www.whatcar.com/news/reliability-survey-the-most-expensive-cars-to-fix-and-the-cheapest/n26894

Also if there’s a model you’re interested in, go to the subreddit for that model (& year), and you’ll see what kinds of issues pop up. Just searching too of course
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:59 PM on September 22


When my daughter was in HS, she got the use of our oldest car. It was amazing how many dings and dents it got in an HS parking lot.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:34 AM on September 23 [3 favorites]


I would suggest what I did for my teen: a used Subaru Outback (with backup camera and lane warnings) with some cosmetic dings but no history of accidents.

They are incredibly safe cars and can load one college dorms worth of stuff later. But the used car aspect has more benefits than just financial: it lets them worry about being *safe* rather than protective of your *money*.

My kid was almost in a serious accident a couple years ago: they avoided it by evasive driving that caused sideswipe damage on one side of the car. Even though my obvious and stated preference has always been to have them safe, they confessed recently they never would have had the nerve to do that maneuver if the car hadn’t already been older and “a little beat up.”

Meanwhile, my de facto step kid has a new car from their other parent and the fear of dings has caused so much erratic driving we are always afraid they will get hit.
posted by corb at 7:36 AM on September 23 [3 favorites]


James Bragg's advice on cars for teens was always this: get a big ugly American sedan, like a Buick or a Caprice Classic or something. Or a K car, which wasn't so huge It would be safer simply based on the mass surrounding them, and wouldn't have the poor sightlines (and handling) of an SUV. Obviously those models are dated suggestions now, but you can find similar sedans on the market. I specifically would not get them a small hatchback.

Definitely look into some teen driving rules, like no more than one other kid in the car. Your state probably has rules on it anyway, for the first year or so.
posted by intermod at 8:02 AM on September 23 [1 favorite]


Two daughters.
Buy what you can afford with the expectation it may get totaled.
Daughter #1 totaled a 12 year old Toyota Corolla she inherited from her grandmother, a 8 year old Chevy from another grandparent, all within 2 years but still has her 2013 Yaris.
Daughter #2 got a Chevy sonic right as Covid started, . She has had it since, no wrecks. It’s underpowered and the AC sorta sucks but it has had no issues. And it’s paid off.
Reddits what car should I buy will always say Toyota, Honda and Mazda but by the time #2 drove, the prices of all of those was stupid high and not in my budget.
Daughter #1 cared about what her car looked like, had some mild protests that she was not getting a car she wanted. Daughter #2 could care less. Both now are grateful to have paid off cars that are inexpensive to maintain. I always said I would help them with their first car to meet their transportation needs but they are responsible for buying the car they want…
posted by ReiFlinx at 9:33 AM on September 23 [2 favorites]


You might not want to take the Car Life Expectancy Calculator cited above as gospel. It tells me my car should last another 104 years

LOL. I tried it out with some random cars and it seemed reasonable, but maybe you'd be better off just assuming any car will last about 15 years or 180,000 miles, whichever comes first. (As long as rust isn't a huge issue where you live. Where I live, it would be safer to assume 12 years.)

My kids are careful drivers (for real, I think, not just successfully convincing me they are), so it seemed reasonable to me to suggest a new or almost new car could make financial sense. But thinking about the stories my daughter tells me, maybe the people warning you to assume it will be crashed are right. Among kids at her college it is apparently extremely normal to drive high, drive too fast, use phones while driving and just generally be a bad and careless driver. A guy she knows just wrecked the car he got to replace the car he wrecked last year. (I think this was the guy who wrecked his car by deliberately sliding on an icy road.) I guess this isn't helpful for keeping your worry under control. I'm not sure what you can do to make sure your kid isn't one of the reckless ones. But maybe having a car she likes and doesn't want to damage could actually help somewhat.
posted by Redstart at 12:00 PM on September 23


My kid just turned 16. No way he's getting a car yet. He will learn to drive on my vehicle and his dad's vehicle, and then he'll be allowed to borrow either vehicle occasionally. We're going to pay for his car insurance for now because he doesn't have a job.

If he proves himself a safe driver, he will get a car for graduation. It will be a used car, most likely a honda or a toyota, something his dad and I will probably pay for from our savings (no financing). We will cover his insurance for at least the first year of college, possibly longer if he keeps up good grades (likely) and also happens to not have a job (unlikely).

It's possible that my attitudes and assumptions are different from a many Americans'. I can't imagine buying a brand new car even for myself, even though I can probably afford it. I'm currently on my second car ever and both my cars have been used cars.
posted by MiraK at 3:12 PM on September 24


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