These Are the Worst Cars For Teen Drivers

[O]ne of my former colleagues bought his 16 year old daughter a used 2000-ish Jeep Wrangler with a lift kit for her Christmas present.

A few months into her senior year, she lost control coming off the interstate in the rain and flipped the car on the ramp. She was okay, fortunately, but the ‘rents decided she needed something more suitable to a driver of her age and experience level. She was given mom’s Accord station wagon.

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This, right here. Removable top and doors, short & narrow wheelbase with a high COG even if un-lifted, usually fitted with A/T or mud tires that deliver horrible traction on pavement, poor crash and rollover scores across the board, and the famous death wobble that no inexperienced driver will be able to mitigate or recover from. I have a similar story to yours - my sister and brother in law were considering a used Wrangler for my nephew’s graduation gift before he went off to college because he’d always wanted one. I protested mightily for all of the above reasons. Same thing happened, he lost control on an exit ramp and rolled it into a ditch. Fortunately he was alone and was uninjured, but these are a great way to kill your kids and their friends.

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Pretty sure that would be my LS 6.0 liter swapped 1987 Wrangler. It’s got Dana 44s, a 3/4-ton drivetrain (NV4500 manual...6.34:1 granny low baby!), and 33s. It’s got around 400 HP and the brakes are...underwhelming.

My oldest boy is 12 and thinks he’s going to inherit it when he gets his license...I told him not until after you have grandchildren.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I, Hankel_Wankel, Jakestorr and others.

Anything other than a lightly-used sedan or small CUV made between 2010 and now.

No “specialty” vehicles. No sports cars, sport compacts, off-road-focused SUVs. They will wreck it. “But I taught them how to—” Nope, stop right there. They will wreck it. Listen to my words. It’s not a question of if, nor a judgement on your teaching abilities. The more capable the vehicle, the more your child will test its limits. If it can go fast, they will go fast someplace where they should never, ever go fast, like an Arby’s drive-thru. If they can go off-roading with it, they will go off-roading where they should never, ever go off-roading. Like an Arby’s drive-thru.

“Buy an old crappy car so they can learn to take care of it/so I can save money on it”. No. This is a terrible idea. There have been so many advances in vehicle safety and technology in the last 15 years, and buying anything older than that is putting your teenager at an unnecessary risk. You want the extra airbags, the stability control, the backup cameras and the crumple zones and the steering wheel buttons. Don’t worry about your child being a good driver, worry about them being a safe driver. You need to keep them protected while they learn to negotiate all of the other terrible drivers, unwritten rules, and quirks of driving in the real world. These days, a bad infotainment system is more likely to cause an accident than anything (don’t buy your kid a Ford with 1st-gen Sync).

Also, having a crappy old car as a teenager sucks. All it teaches them is to hate driving and cars. It doesn’t build character, it builds resentment. If you want to teach your kid to wrench, show them on your crappy old car. You can teach oil changes, brake pads, and tire rotation just as easily on a three-year-old Civic as you can on a 20-year-old Dodge Intrepid.

Submitted by: dbeach84 and others.

Anything rwd. It’s cliché, but even my old Volvo 740 got sideways a few times in bad weather. If you don’t understand car control, it’s easy to end up facing the wrong way on a highway, or in a ditch.

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The caveat being, I think a modern RWD car with good traction control is fine. Granted, you have to be confident that they will leave traction control on all the time, but I think that level of trust comes down to you and your kid.

I’ve done some dumb shit in modern cars to find the limits of traction/stability control and every one I’ve tried makes it really hard to fuck up. Not impossible, but it saved me from everything short of yanking the e-brake.

Submitted by: EMF15Q, put-some-turbo-on-meeeee, and others.

Corvette / Mustang, anything with a ton of horsepower. Seen more than one teenager end up dead that way. Very glad my dad gave me his hand me down Oldsmobile Delta 88 as my first car.

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Yep worked in a body shop and we had a number of repeat clients this way. My favorite was a kid whose dad owned a Chevy dealer, over a year he had 4 IROCs pretty much destroyed- and those didn’t have a lot of power by today’s standards. Fast forward three years and I see the kids name on a repair order for his Jalpa- cash no insurance please he put it into the ditch at 3am- you can fill in the blanks

Submitted by: J-BodyBuilder - Never stick to sports, sklooner and others

An automatic. Kids are too soft these days. And not just any manual will do; they need something extra janky that will teach them to “git gud”. I’m thinking a mechanical clutch on some old beater U-Haul truck that won’t engage half of it’s four forward gears. Kid wants to learn how to drive, give them the crash course (pun intended) and buy them something with zero assist features because “that’s how we learned, dammit, so that’s what’s best”.

Submitted by: paradsecar

Any car. I was willing to loan my kids money to buy a car, and help them with the buying process, and set them up with a repayment plan with 0% interest. If they didn’t want to buy their own car, I made sure there was one for them to drive to/from work , sports, and to go out with their friends. I did not, and will not, outright buy my kids a car.

A car is an expensive privilege. That comes with responsibility. Part of that responsibility is learning how to pay for your privileges. There is no inherent right to a car when you turn 16.

They are now 21 and 18. The 21-year-old has a Bugeye WRX that he bought free and clear when he was 18, with money he’d saved up from jobs he’d had starting as a tween. The 18-year-old lives in a big city with amazing transit. She has no interest in owning a car. Her money, in her mind, is better spent elsewhere.

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That was my mom 100%, my dad was spoiled with a new cars (my grand parents tried go bribe him to stay in school) and in turn wanted to get me a car. She was having none of it so I went through a bunch of beaters I bought with cash and financed all the nice stuff on my own. Honestly wouldn’t do it any other way if I had kids.

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How about they get a job and buy their own car? That’s what I had to do and I appreciated and respected the vehicle more because of it.

Anything with too much power is bad IMO.

Submitted by: JohnnyWasASchoolBoy, Howie and Rasky others

Safety through size.

There was an episode of Top Gear ages ago where Clarkson bought some large car, and the main thing I remember is his thought that the 10 feet of hood would protect his daughter. And I remember thinking that was wrong. But then it’s also Clarkson.

More modern cars will be better than the 70's land yachts, but I could still see the perception that a kid would be safer in something where they’re surrounded in more sheet metal. I’d rather target something with side impact safety and a butt-load of airbags than size.

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A big pickup. Like the one the kid in Texas used to hit all those cyclists.

https://jalopnik.com/a-teenager-ran-over-six-cyclists-while-trying-to-roll-c-1847751857

Submitted by: From 17 Seconds, dolsh and others

Anything super reliable.

In high school I drove a $400 car that was minimally reliable. It wasn’t always effective at this, but I always had to run a risk/reward calculation of what would happen if it broke down when I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.

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Are you serious?! Anything car over $5000 is the worst car to buy a teenager. Because if you’re buying the car then they’re probably new drivers with no serious full-time job, which means no experience and no sense of responsibility yet developed to the point they’ll treat it right and strive to keep it in one piece. That first car should be considered disposable and should be priced accordingly. Wait for them to wreck that one and then you can spend a little more. Totaling a car has a way of delivering perspective and focusing the mind. 

Submitted by: skwimjim and Harmon20

An actual, true-to-its-name shitbox. We think getting kids cheap cars is a great idea until the safety features on them (or lack thereof) are completely blindsided by a soccer mom in a Suburban texting behind the wheel, doing 30+ over what she should be on her way to get a unicorn frappuccino from the local Starbucks. Not saying it will happen but, the odds of it happening are much higher than you think.

We all love our kids right? Get them safe cars. Don’t force them to drive deathtraps.

Submitted by: Lil Xanos

Well right now the worst car to buy a teenager is a Hyundai or Kia. You’re already going to be paying more for insurance on a kid so should avoid double-dipping in increased costs if you can even find good coverage for it.

The best car for a teenager is the new car you buy yourself. The teenager gets the hand-me-down. It’s probably the car they’re most comfortable in since it’s what they learned to drive with, and you already know the maintenance history and needs of the car so there’s no surprises compared to buying a random beater.

Submitted by: savethemanualsbmw335ix

Manual transmission Mustang, especially in a snowy climate. Got it from my dad as first car when I was 16, put it in the ditch in the ice and snow at least 3 times, burned up 2 clutches, at least 4 sets of back tires and finally blew the motor up and got rid of it all in the span of a year. Plus it had bad wiring that we couldn’t figure out, so it would blow the fuse for the tail lights all the time, so half the time I had no dash or tail lights as they were on the same circuit. I kept a container of replacement fuses in the cup holder and could lean down and reach under the dash and swap out the fuse while driving down the road. Just glad I survived it and didn’t hurt anyone else, I very easily could have been a Mustang stereotype.

Submitted by: RideOrange.

My wife’s aunt and uncle have two kids. Their daughter got a Chevy Cruze for her 16th birthday. Their son got a fully loaded Camaro for his. He wrecked the car a couple months later, and they got him another one. He wrecked that one too. The parents are both smart people, yet couldn’t figure out that a Camaro wasn’t a good car for a 16 year old.

Submitted by: zerosignal

any car that you care about. resist the urge to try to recapture your youth by buying your kid an impractical car that you love or would have loved. one, they probably aren’t going to like it very much. two, they will probably be rough with it and it will just break your heart.

Submitted by: epochellipse

My ex-in-laws wanted to gift our firstborn son an Eagle Talon TSi. That would have been a spectacularly poor choice as a first car...or a second.

Submitted by: Gnomadd