QOTD: What's the Best Car for Your Teen?
For this week's TTAC podcast, we chatted about the cars that U.S. News & World Report dubbed the best cars for teens for 2024.
Now it's your turn.
If you have a teen, or have a youngster approaching teen years, what would you buy them -- or advise them to buy?
If you have grown kids, what did you have them drive?
And of course, if you feel like it, you can chat about what you drove as a teen.
Sound off below.
[Image: Hyundai]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
More by Tim Healey
Comments
Join the conversation
Jeff,
When I was stationed in Yongson Korea I had an older tan rotary phone at my desk. I laughed as I haven’t seen one in a long time.
My old man raced enduro bikes in the 60s but got banged up so badly he never taught me how to ride. I’ve always wanted to but the only reason i’m alive is probably because I never leaned to ride a motorcycle.
Motorcycles can be dangerous but there ways to minimize the risk. While in Army flight school the commanding Major General from the U.S Army safety center briefed all the pilots on all the bike fatalities in the Army that year and 99% of them were caused from riders drinking and riding in addition to reckless driving. Don’t drink and slow down reduces that risk by over 99%. You can apply that advice to a lot of things in life. And yes I ride, since 1998. 2002 Hayabusa, 2005 Suzuki Vstrom, 2007 Kawasaki KLR650, 1977 Suzuki GT750 and 1980 Suzuki GS1000. No accidents currently.
Back in our day, it would have been an old-school carbureted car with mechanical everything so maintenance would be easy and said teen would learn something along the way.
Nowadays, I would get a reliable 4-cylinder car. They certainly don't need a whole lot of horsepower (and in the early 80s, when I was that teenager, there wasn't much HP available!), and unfortunately, other than basic maintenance like oil changes, filters, and possibly brakes.