What's the Best Car For a Teenager？

This is Doug DiMuro and today we're going to talk about the best car for a teenager. I get asked this question all the time. I'm about to start driving or my son or daughter is about to start driving. They're turning 16, they're turning 17, 18. What car should I get for them? What car should they get? And it's an interesting question Today's video is sponsored by Cars and Bids, and so now I'm going to answer it. which is my online car auction website for modern enthusiast cars. So far, Cars and Bids has sold almost 500 million dollars worth of cars. All sorts of special and cool stuff like this, and this, and this, and this. If you're looking to sell your enthusiast car, reach a vast audience at carsandbids.com. Okay, so best car for a teenager. Again, the scenario is this is a first car. It's either a parent buying the car for their son or daughter or the child, you know, working to buy the car, working with the parents to buy the car, whatever it is. And this question is asked of me very frequently, and I want to make something really clear. There is an enormous range of answers to this question, and I have a suspicion that people are going to be rather upset with my responses no matter what I say. And I say that specifically because a lot of my audience is in the range of people who are getting their first car or who are past their first car and angry about what they got and wanted something different or better, or are past the range of their first car and don't quite yet have the life experience and perspective to understand that when they were Maybe a powerful first car wouldn't have been the best idea. They're like 23. They're like, I could have handled that. And it's like, well, so, but anyway, I think those people might not be so happy about some of my responses. And I think regardless of what I respond, people are going to have different takes. So I'm going to give you a lot of kind of caveats and a lot of reminders that this is my opinion and not the gospel, but I'll at least explain, you know, why I feel this the way that I do about this. The first thing I'll say is that this greatly depends on exactly the type of kid that your son or daughter is. Some kids want to learn how to drive a manual transmission. Some kids are into cars and want to learn how to, like, wrench, how to, like, get started working on a car. And so they specifically want something that's maybe a little bit older, maybe a little bit, you know, more mechanically available, where you can, you know, get under the hood or whatever, where there's a lot of parts availability. Where that stuff is fairly easy. It's like an early learner car. Some kids just need a car. They need transportation to get from point A to point B. And so there's a wide range of various possibilities here. And it's a little bit difficult to give a one-size-fits-all answer. But my general take, my general viewpoint on this topic is that a first car for a 16, 17, 18-year-old driver should be four primary things. And again, if your kid is a very specific whatever, they're a pole vaulter and they need a place to carry their pole, it doesn't apply to everybody. But my general take is, number one, the car should be safe. This is a mistake that I see a lot of parents making that surprises me. 16-year-olds. They haven't driven much. I mean, in addition to the fact that their frontal lobe isn't developed and the reaction time might not be completely there because they don't have the experience, they just don't have a lot of knowledge of driving. And so they haven't been in a lot of situations where even the best driver, a 16-year-old, isn't necessarily going to be the best driver. And so for me, safety is one of the paramount things that I would be looking for if I was interested in buying a car for my 16-year-old. And I get a lot of parents come up to me and say, oh, I'm thinking about getting my 16-year-old an NA Miata. I just wouldn't like it just would. I would want to focus a little bit more on safety and with the knowledge that these if your kid wants a performance car, whatever, that can come. But safety is a really, really big thing. And I think a point to make here also is this is a reason why you should consider not getting your 16 year old an old car. People are like, I got my 16 year old a $4,000 car. He's going to learn, you know, vehicles. And it's like, well, yeah, but what is a $4,000 car? I mean, is this a car? Toyota Camry from the 80s with lap belts and no airbags, no anti-lock brakes. I mean, a 16-year-old, an early driver should... Safe should be probably the number one thing because these drivers statistically get in a lot of accidents. There's a reason their insurance rates are so high. And safety would be, as a person who now has children, not of driving age, but I think a lot about, you know, their safety and their survival. And safety is a big, big factor for me. And so I think parents should really put a lot more focus in that than some of them do. The number two thing I think generally that people should be looking for in a teenage driver car is a reliable car. A lot of parents out there who want their kids to learn how to work on a car or who want their kids to have an older car because it's cheap and they want to, that's what I had when I was 16 and I'll figure it out too. They would scoff at this. My kid doesn't need a reliable car. They just need a car. They'll figure it out. And well, maybe, but as the parent, what that often means is they call you up. And say, hey, I'm stranded somewhere. I had an unreliable first car. I had a Volvo 850 Turbo. And there were a lot of calls placed to my parents. Hey, I'm at so-and-so's house. My car won't start. You know, then it was kind of on my parents. This was before Uber. This was before, you know, my friends sometimes couldn't drive. Or they weren't able to drive, if you know what I mean. And so my parents often had to deal with my car's unreliability. And so a teen driver doesn't want to get stranded somewhere. A teenager has a lot of stressors and BS in their life. Between school and activities and friends and all this stuff. And the last. The last thing you want to do is add a random vehicle repair bills. Their whole life will be made up of random, unplanned expenses. You don't necessarily want to stick with automotive repair bills, too. And so my goal would be safe and reliable. Third thing that I would want for a teen driver is a car that's slow. I am surprised how frequently parents talk to me about cars for their teenager. And one of the things they're often like, oh, I'm going to get him this such and such performance car. And it's like, cool. He's lucky. She's lucky. Um, I don't know if I'd want to give a car like that to a teen driver. I hear a lot of stories about teens doing dumb things and putting them behind the wheel of a car with 400 or 500 horsepower is not necessarily something that I would do. Um, and I would probably stick my kids in something that's not particularly fast or exciting. And again, with the knowledge that if they want to be in a fun car later. They can do that with their own money as they grow up, as they develop, as their driving skills improve. But a fast car for a teen, and often I see parents kind of talked into this. Their teenage son or daughter, he gets good grades and she's on sports and she's always, you know, she's developed into this lovely person. So we can trust her or him with a sports car. And it's like, well, still wouldn't. I really, really still wouldn't. And so I would definitely make that be a thing. I would say not a fast car, at least for a 16, 17-year-old new driver. And the last thing, and the four things that I would say generally I would want all the cars to hit that I would recommend for a teen driver, I would want it to be not too big, but also not too small. If you get a car that's too big for a teen driver, you run the, there's a fuel economy issue. Even if they're paying for their own gas, it becomes tremendously expensive. There's a friend's issue. Um, it's statistically, it's a lot more dangerous for teen drivers to drive when a lot of their friends are in the car. Some states have laws about how many young passengers can be in a car. Um, but those are often ignored and they're hard to enforce. And so a lot of kids ignore that. So if you, if your kid has an Escalade with seven seats, they're going to be the ones driving around their friend, you know, and, and that's not a great situation. Um, necessarily, and also a big car with a young driver is just a recipe for them crashing into stuff, bumping into stuff, etc. So I would avoid something really big, but I would also avoid something that's too small. The safety factor comes back into play here. You know, you get your kid a Geo Metro or a little Honda Civic hatchback, and I am just not entirely sure that that's necessarily the best thing for a kid to have a car that is just sort of so relatively small and relatively unsafe compared to just, you know, mid-sized, generally normal-sized cars that are probably a little bit better, especially on the roads here in North America, where there are so many pickup trucks, SUVs, et cetera, driving around. You don't really want your kid to be in that NA Miata versus Hyundai Palisade collision. It's not going to go well for them. So sort of a normal-sized car that is slow, reliable, and safe. Now, given these parameters, you're probably already realizing where I'm kind of heading with this. And I want to make a caveat here. I understand this will not lead to a fun car. And I understand that a lot of the watchers of my videos who are 16 to 25 or whatever are saying, well, that's stupid. I can handle it. And as well, you know, that's the thing that a lot of 16-year-olds say. But I think it's really important to understand that the first car will not be your only car, particularly if you get a safe one. Um, and And fun wasn't one of the categories on the list that I just gave you. I said safe, reliable, slow, and normal size. Fun is not one of those things. I feel that for a first car, your goal should be to learn how to drive, to learn how to operate a car, to learn the rules of the road, to learn how to react to things, to anticipate things. You're not necessarily trying to go out and enjoy, and I think fun can come later, and for so many drivers it does. I mean, my first car was sort of an average car. It was a little on the powerful side, a Volvo 850 Turbo, and I learned how to drive in that car, and of course, many years later, I have all these fun and special cars, but the reason that I'm able to drive these cars relatively well is that I had a lot of tutorial time in kind of lesser cars that taught me how to drive. And so, yes, I know I'm even. Even Doug, the car enthusiast, is saying you shouldn't have a fun car and it seems to go against what I'm saying. But I'm also thinking about how teenagers are and how teen drivers are and a fun car shouldn't necessarily be a priority or a goal or even an outcome that happens to occur. I think the goal for first driving, for learning driving, is to try to inflict the least possible amount of damage on yourself, on others, and on the vehicle. And a fun car doesn't Does it necessarily lead to that outcome? Exactly what should you get for a teen driver or what should a teen driver get? Obviously, the answer to this question more than anything else depends on the budget that you have. But, you know, my first car was six grand. I don't think that you can buy great cars at that price point anymore. You couldn't really even vet 20 years ago. But figuring, you know, maybe somewhere in the $10,000 to $20,000 range, which is fairly reasonable for either a parent just to go halvesies with their kid or the kid to work it off, you know, get a car loan, etc. I would look, frankly, at all of the usual suspects in that range, which is Subaru Outback, Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, Ford Escape, vehicles like that. And to be clear, I would try to get, based on your budget, I would try to get the newest possible one with the most possible safety features. You know, a lot of the... Purist car enthusiast, I don't need blind spot monitoring or forward collision alert or any of that. I can just drive. And it's like, well, you know, a lot of those features are statistically shown to be beneficial, but especially for a 16-year-old driver. You could see some of those features really, really being helpful if you're new to the road and you're trying to learn. And people will say, well, they got to learn blind spots without a beeper there. Well, Maybe, but the beeper certainly helps, and also I'm not sure they do. I think that cars going forward, in large part, will have those features. It's like when your teacher used to say, you have to learn all your numbers because you'll never be able to walk around with a calculator in your pocket, and it's like, well, no, I do, I do walk around with a calculator. They're in my pocket, actually. Everyone does. And so, you know, it's also like I tell people with manual transmissions. Your kid doesn't really need to know manual anymore. Cars don't have manuals anymore. It used to be that, okay, well, I still have to learn if I go to Europe to rent a car. Well, even there, the last few times I've gone to Europe to rent a car, they've given me an automatic without me asking for it. It's just not as essential of a skill. And I think that's true with, like, you know, for example, braking. Like, you don't need to learn how to pump the brakes anymore. Basically, every car a young driver now is going to be getting into will probably have anti-lock brakes, unless they specifically choose one without it. In which case, they're probably gonna be capable of that. Any car that a young driver, you know, will have now will probably have a three-point seatbelt and airbags. And so they can understand how to put their hands in the steering wheel with an airbag wheel, how to wear a three-point seatbelt. You don't have to teach them about lap belts and collapsible steering columns. And I think the same is true with some of the modern tech features that are really going to proliferate and already have in a lot of cars. And so, yes, that may be removing them a little bit from the road and from the understanding of of driving, but it also will help them be a safer driver. It's statistically true. It's probably features they're going to encounter more and more as time goes on. But regardless, those are the kinds of cars that I would suggest, is these compact crossovers and SUVs, reliable, sort of modern, relatively roomy, but not huge compact crossovers and SUVs like those cars. Chevy Equinox, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Vehicles in that range. And I know they're not exciting, and I know it's not... There may even be 16 year olds out there whose parents watch this video and then say, no, we're going to get in a CRV and they'll be disappointed. But I promise you there are more great cars on your horizon in the future. It's best to take the 16 to 22 year old years as a learning experience for, you know, how to how to get behind the wheel, how to understand how to drive. And at 16, 17, 18, I mean, I didn't think that I had a lot to learn, but you do. And you only realize that with hindsight that like they're driving really takes a lot of skill to do it properly. And I think that starting off with a car that is sort of a basic, safe, comfortable, slow car will allow teenagers to get the space to learn driving without having to, you know, have some exciting vehicle or some unreliable vehicle that could cause them trouble, etc. And so those are my takes on the best car. For a teenager. Not the exciting, not the most exciting cars, not fun cars, and I'm sorry for that. Car enthusiast Doug may have let you down here, but that's how I genuinely feel, and I really believe that those are the best cars.