For when their mom or I am not available to give them a ride, they're still within biking distance (~2 miles) of their PT jobs and volunteering activities. It all works out pretty well.

Were going with a Mazda 3. Safe, cheap, handles reasonably well, good visibility, nice tight chassis, severely underpowered. Perfect.

:lol:

I've always threatened to knock several cylinders out of whatever we get for our son.

Always loved the Mazda’s ... I have one for sale ... and yes it’s under powered too ... any interest for a GREAT deal :D

http://forums.carmudgeons.com/showthread.php?t=150757

Chiming in as I see I've been referenced...

Yeah, we got our (then) 17 yo a new VW GTI 6-spd (sport) last year. She has been using it to commute to her summer job last year and this year and drove herself to school and activities since getting it. She also helps out and takes her brother to his activities from time to time when our schedules conflict.

She will be taking it to college as a freshman this year in a cold place that gets a lot of snow. As we haven't had any meaningful snow in the DC area since she's been driving, that does concern me a bit. But she's been an excellent driver who does really seem to understand her car. We plan to have her do the TireRack teen driving school at a track near her college when we can align dates. For now, I'm telling her to pretty much wait until the plows come through and you can see pavement. No errand at college is *that* urgent.

It's kind of a "lot of car" for a kid, but it's also very responsive and communicates a lot about what its doing and about the road. So she's learning a lot about feel which she wouldn't be doing in a lesser car. She hates driving the Tesla because it's "too floaty" and the brakes "suck". And she's totally bought in to the huge superiority of a manual transmission over an automatic. By all means, all of you really ought to make sure your kids learn to drive stick.

The car being new means it has some technology that will make it safer for a teen including CarPlay, which only let's you deal with your texts verbally using Siri. No typing. And it reads incoming texts to you. And her and her friends all love the Spotify integration.

We did end up in the low $20Ks for the car, but it's something she'll have through her mid-20s. And it's a great car that I honestly think has instilled in her a preference for the kind of things we here have always valued in our cars.

As a bonus, almost no one she meets will be able to drive her car, so you don't have to worry about her lending it out.

She already knows that this is a huge bonus. I've tried to shame her boyfriend about this...

Might want to send her up with an aggressive set of snow tires, like Hakkas, already mounted. She won't be driving that much or that aggressively where the snows will be a detriment from Sept to the first snow/slippery mess in late October or from April when it thaws until she comes home in May. I think it makes a HUGE difference in winter safety, especially for someone not used to snow driving for the ability to stop in a moderate distance vs all seasons.

The plan is to swap for snows when she's home for fall break should we decide she needs them. I'd really rather not spring for a second set of wheels/tires. But it might be warranted.

George (most recently "Mr. The Edge" on this site) was texting me offline just the other day asking me what I was going to do about snows for our daughter as his daughter is going to school in Reno and is taking her car. He bought her a new Beetle when she turned 16, so add that to the statistical sample here.

Good point. Even performance snows would help some.