A Teens First Car

Depends on the teen...

I would have liked a Prius when I was a teen or anything new for that matter, but had a rusty 63 Ford one ton that barely ran. Learned a great deal about mechanics. But I digress.

 

have fun paying that insurance premium for your teen in a $30,000 new car...

 

I think it's a horrible idea to buy a teenager a $30,000 vehicle.

 

My daughter got her license on July 28. On July 30 she gently backed into a parked vehicle. It caused very minor damage to the car she was driving, but caused $2700 worth of damage to the other car! It might have been the other way around.

I'm just glad that I got my new Prius in July and my daughter inherited my in-very-good-condition-but-older 2001 VW Passat. I can't imagine any teen needing a new car. Well, maybe you're talking about a nineteen year old teen. That's a different story!

 

UMM... what teen has the money for a $30,000 car plus insurance which would be thousands more each year? Paris Hilton maybe when she was a teen?

 

I think it's a great car if you can afford it (and the insurance). The only downside is that it takes a while to figure out where the corners of the car are.

 

I'd get the II...and I say it depends on the Teen. Is it what they want? I'd rent one and have them drive it for a few days so they can compare it to a regular car.

 

If you want well thought out responses, you'll have to post more about yourself and your circumstances. Most teens don't have the means to pay for a new car, much less a $30,000 car, so to us older folks, it doesn't make much sense.

Even if you can afford it, To get experience driving. I would start with a more basic car. With a Prius, there is a lot to distract you as a driver.

As far as pictures, Check out the thread "Official 2010 Owners Pics" in the sticky thread section.

 

Putting a new driver in a brand new car doesn't seem wise to me. Even the best of them need a few years of experience go be trusted not to make noob mistakes. In short this could be a very expensive proposition.

My first car was a mid-80s Volvo and about 12 years old when I started driving it. It was safe and reliable but imperfect, so I got some good experience DIYing. I would have missed out in a big way if I never got my hands dirty under the hood. And oddly enough it was one of the nicer cars in the student parking lot!

 

Judging from your user name, you are a teen with a serious concern about the environment, and you want to do your part to lessen your impact on it. I highly commend you for that.

What I think a lot of other posters are pointing out is that the Prius is a relatively expensive automobile, and it may not be a good decision to entrust one to an inexperienced driver. To put it in environmental terms, if you wreck it, all the energy and materials that went into producing it will be wasted. For that reason, it may actually make better environmental (and economic) sense to buy a used car that has already fulfilled part of its useful life, or a less expensive new car such as a Honda Fit, that has a smaller initial investment in resources.

If you think about it this way, there is more than one way to be green and help the planet.

Thank you for your concern for the planet. I hope there are lots more teens like you.

 

I think the perfect first car is a Subaru Forester, 03-08. Why? Easiest car I have ever driven. Sight lines are great. Downside was poor city mileage (18), and it is a smaller car than the prius (in terms of passenger compartment...more storage).

While I love my prius, I do not know where the corners are. I have already backed into a cement post and scratched up the bumper on my 2 month old prius. Note that I have been driving for 30 years now (egads!).

Prius is a good car, but as a newly driving teenager, odds are you are going to put some serious dents in it. (I learned on a 75 Chrysler Newport....that was a tank...quickly shifted to a diesle rabbit, which game me the eco bug)

 

I'm not going to go on about the price of the car because everyone's situation is different and its all relative. I will agree that it depends on the person (teen). The Prius is a great car and I think that people on this site would agreeon that, for the most part. If the OP is interested in a Prius, then go for it. I'm not going to suggest that just because you are a teen you should be driving one car versus another.

When I was a teen, I wanted something fast and stylish, but what I got was my parent's station wagon (on life support) Lol.

 

Hmm, something didn't chime. A rich 16 year old on PC, asking us old folks advice? If this was on the up&up, that's great and commendable. Thought I'd check your prior posts.
Rather than focusing on a new car, perhaps you may want to spend more time hitting the books before you go to collage (college)....

From 7/26 and back:

wow...i ordered the prius white iv with solar roof i was the firs on the list...i went to a toyota dealer in the middle of no where... so i signed up and the ohter day i get a call saying its in and i go in today for my appointment to pick it up and some other sales men just got done selling mine to some other person...=( i was so mad...but then they made me happy..there refunding my fee to hold a prius and they took a thousand off...and gave me all my accessories that i added for free...so im still a little mad cause i got to wait a month now...so yea...

what is the square light looking thin above the fog light spot...it looks like a lights there...

Hi im 16 and i ordered the 2010 Prius IV with solar roof...i live in bakersfield california and inbakersfield we hardly get fogcause we live in like a bowle...so when you go outside that bowle in the winter time theres fog in the mountains and the collage im going to gets snow/ and fog so im needing the fog lights...just anting to know if you got them installed yet and how good are they..

 

I confess I bought my teens ex-government AWD cars as we lived where it snowed 10 months a year. They got beaters that could get them to school.

eBay Store - Oregon Surplus Property II: Emergency Services, Heavy Equipment, Maintenance Utility

 

I'm going to go in a slightly different direction and say a Prius (either Gen II or III) is a wonderful first car for a high school age teen. If you are one that falls into the camp of never buy a kid a new 1st car then look around for a decent gen II. Having bought my son a new 2007 shortly after he got his license I can say in 20/20 hindsight that in addition to being lower impact on the environment, the Prius makes a fantastic car for learning good driving habits.

We also live where it actually snows in the winter and had been considering a number of small AWD sedans. The one exception to my "must be AWD" rule when he was looking around was the Prius, which he loved the first time he drove one. With the exception of the the Subarus (which none of the family was wild about) all the other cars under consideration were quite sporty and had IMO way too much power for a 16yo. When I was a kid no cars had 300+ hp, low profile tires and shift paddles on the steering wheel.

Even if they start out driving conservatively the temptation for kids to gradually push things further is very strong. The Prius (especially the gen II) is a modestly powered but extremely practical transportation machine that presents driving satisfaction rewards in other ways that "going faster". I'm very comfortable in saying that my son is a better and safer driver now after having earned his initial driving experience in a Prius than he would have been with one of our other options.

When comparing a new or fairly new Prius vs a "clunker" Even though it's a smaller car than say a 10yo high mass SUV, I personally felt much better knowing that it had modern safety conveniences such as lots of airbags, ABS, traction control, fwd, HID headlights, etc. It also made me happy that he was almost always the dedicated driver amongst the kids he hung out with, which made sense since he doesn't drink or use, but I simply trust his driving more than that of some of his more wild friends. The reason he usually ended up driving was the simple fact that it cost *much* less to take his car as compared to one of the older SUV's that many of his friends drove.

With a full set of dedicated snows the only time he had an issue in the winter was with ground clearance getting over the some of the deeper snow berms, and a little experience soved most of those situations.

 

Well, hmmmm. Looks like you let the cat out of the bag, Dean. I was picturing not so much a kid soliciting advice as a kid who wanted a Prius (possibly for laudable reasons) and was looking for ammunition to convince his/her parents. Now I'm thinking a kid (teen? 10-year-old?) who's just goofing around.

Whatever the case is, you're right. This poster needs to spend more time hitting the books and less time thinking about a new car.

 

Wow! This kid is 16, and already in "collage"? Must be quite a scholar! I wonder if her mom is pouring Lucky Charms into her cereal "bowle" as she writes these posts?

 

I do believe the Prius is a great car for a teen because it is cheap to maintain. More so for a teen age girl, if it is a teenage boy friends at school may give him a hard time. Most young guys are into imports that can be tuned.

Parents bought me a brand new red '89 Golf GTI when I was 16 and nothing bad happened to me or the car. I took care of it and kept it 9 years. Sold it because I moved to another country.