the perfect car for a 17 year old in theory?

[petemurphy]

so just thinking out loud as am bored - my daughter is 3 so have a little while!

what would you get your kid as their first car if you had a healthy budget. My only concern would be safety safety safety.

so would you get the latest underpowered hatchback as they should have good safety tech, a classic as its underpowered and they might look after it more or a 2 seater to stop them giving lifts to friends and being egged on?

would it be different for boy / girl

thoughts?

golf? mx5? bigger saloon? boring jap car? c class? volvo?

[Impasse]

I bought my girl a cheapy 1.0ltr Yaris for her seventeenth. She ran it for a couple of years bumping it up kerbs, scraping it against car park pillars and loading it up to go camping with her mates. Utterly reliable and reasonably inexpensive to run and insure. All of which are desirable motoring traits for one's offspring. She learnt a lot with that little car, from basic maintenance through to the virtue of winter tyres on the snow covered streets.

Sold it for a £50 profit two years later and is now whizzing around in a Swift Sport.

[mblade123]

I just bought my 18 year old daughter a fiat 500.
Cheap to run, insure, tax and surprisingly robust

[Baryonyx]

I'd buy them a reasonably inexpensive saloon like a Mondeo, an X Type or an S Class. Give them something a little more worthy and see that they treat it with respect. And crucially, gain confidence with a bigger car. I've met a lot of inexperienced drivers who can't reverse park a car that doesn't end where the back window is.

[Animal]

I'd go for something like a Renault Twingo or a Toyota Aygo:

- cheap to run, insure and maintain
- modern and therefore (hopefully) safe
- slow
- easy to manoeuvre
- too small for all their mates to tag along

[budfox]

I went through this process and ended up buying an Aygo for my boy.

I pretty much decided that it has to be something with modern safety features, pretty slow, and small.

[londonbabe]

I don't have or want kids but if I did I would get them a Smart, because it is slow, fifth gear showed it as strong (largely intact after running into a concrete block at 70) and being a 2-seater they would only be able to kill one of their friends.

[Sycamore]

londonbabe said:

fifth gear showed it as strong (largely intact after running into a concrete block at 70)

Surely if the car seems intact, then the crumple zone in the case of a Smart would be your legs

[kambites]

I'd be telling mine that he/she doesn't need a car until after university.

[SWoll]

kambites said:

I'd be telling mine that he/she doesn't need a car until after university.

I've come to the same conclusion.

Baryonyx said:

I'd buy them a reasonably inexpensive saloon like a Mondeo, an X Type or an S Class. Give them something a little more worthy and see that they treat it with respect. And crucially, gain confidence with a bigger car. I've met a lot of inexperienced drivers who can't reverse park a car that doesn't end where the back window is.

Good look insuring any of the above.

OOI, for the posters above, how much does something like a Yaris, 500 or Aygo cost to insure for a 17/18 year old these days. I'm assuming it's utterly ridiculous?

[Impasse]

SWoll said:

Good look insuring any of the above.

OOI, for the posters above, how much does something like a Yaris, 500 or Aygo cost to insure for a 17/18 year old these days. I'm assuming it's utterly ridiculous?

Depending on the usual criteria, but in a safe suburban area, with her mother as a named driver and obviously a girl, I paid just over £900 to fully comp my girl's Yaris back in 2010.

[alock]

Long wheel base transit. Everyone should learn to parallel park one of these. Once you can do this, any car is trivially easy. Also a mattress in the back allows them to crash out anywhere they get drunk.

[Crush]

3 door 4x4 like a Jimny or Wrangler

[Lazadude]

SWoll said:

Good look insuring any of the above.

OOI, for the posters above, how much does something like a Yaris, 500 or Aygo cost to insure for a 17/18 year old these days. I'm assuming it's utterly ridiculous?

£2.5-3K minimum, for a 17 YO Boy just passed.

[dazwalsh]

Theres something about the little pissy cars like the c1 and smart etc which doesn't give me confidence in safety, probably the shorter crumple zones, so it would have to be a ford focus sized car. Something which would absorb an impact a bit better.

I cringe when i see a student heading off to uni with their rusting P reg ford ka stuffed to their brim with clobber.

[petemurphy]

dazwalsh said:

Theres something about the little pissy cars like the c1 and smart etc which doesn't give me confidence in safety, probably the shorter crumple zones, so it would have to be a ford focus sized car. Something which would absorb an impact a bit better.

I cringe when i see a student heading off to uni with their rusting P reg ford ka stuffed to their brim with clobber.

this although i did the same in a metro! would want my daughter more protected though!

love the transit idea!

how about a mini are they safe? is there much diff in safety of a brand new car compared to one 5 years ago? all in theory at the mo i dont need to worry for a while but it got me thinking!

[LukeR94]

I would be telling them they need to buy their own car.

Bet you all will end up giving them a deposit for a house aswell.


You lot are soft!!!

[deltashad]

Insurance costs would be the biggest factor, something between 3-5 years old. Then see whats available. If there was nothing I thought interesting I'd be tempted to look at a small good condition classic like a delta 1300 or xr2 mk1. Even a 1602 bmw. Safety is important but when I was young these were safe new cars. They also don't depreciate and are easy to work on.

[petemurphy]

LukeR94 said:

I would be telling them they need to buy their own car.

Bet you all will end up giving them a deposit ofr a house aswell.


You lot are soft!!!

or they dont want to be taxi's

[Impasse]

LukeR94 said:

I would be telling them they need to buy their own car.

Bet you all will end up giving them a deposit ofr a house aswell.


You lot are soft!!!

If it means she leaves the house in the next two years instead of ten, then it will be worth every penny. It's her last year of three at uni and she holds down two jobs too. Hopefully this year's uni work placement will lead to permanent employment at the end of it so she'll be even better placed to afford to run a home of her own.
I don't have anyone else to spend my money on, so it might as well be my daughter.