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Originally Posted by TD
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.
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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.