I got a pretty sweet hand me down when I turned 16. 96 honda accord in 99. I wouldn't give my kids a high-end vehicle, but there's nothing wrong with giving them a solid ride. The last thing I would want is my daughter stranded on the side of the freeway bc I bought her a hooptie ride.
Sorry about the double post I started college a month after my 17th bday.. I would have been royally screwed if I didn't have a car
I guess everyone handles it differently but I like the route where you don't get a good car for their first and let them realize what it's worth to have one take care of it and then they can work their way up. My first car in 1995 was a 1979 280zx that had a ton of problems but I honestly loved the car and kept it up like crazy. The engine got flooded one year on my way to U of H when I finally put in a new engine for a while until that just died. It was almost 2000 before I got my second car which was a 96 Honda Accord that I eventually paid and ever since then I have bought my own car and kept on upgrading all the way to what I got now. I remember my best friend and I working at Randalls back in the day and on his 16th birthday his dad said he found him a car. They went took out his savings, all of 400 bucks and bought him his first car which was a old Suburu. His second car was a Civic they got for him that he had to make the payments on after the initial down payment. That was in college. We both are doing well for ourselves and really pushed ourselves to get the best becuase we understood what it took to get something. Not saying everyone is like this but I have had a ton of friends get great cars when they are sixteen only to just crash them or treat it like crap because daddy and mommy would just replace it. I saw it way too often. They had no regard or understanding of the concept of money.
Hell no. Usually, when the kid has no monetary stake in the car, they are less careful when driving. They count on mom to buy them a new one. They don't care about door dings, scratches, dents, maintainance, or accidents. If the teen can put down at least $1k on the car with the parents making up the rest, the teens will be more careful. They won't even like parking the car too close to somebody, because of door dings.
