<p>We bought a used Kia Optima 3 years ago for our older daughter to drive and once younger D got her license for the two of them to share. The used Hondas were way overpriced - we wouldn’t spend $10K+ for a 1995 with 150K miles. I think it is a 2005 or 6; it was the first year of their redesign and it came highly recommended by Consumer Reports. </p>
<p>Larger doesn’t always equal better, it is as important to look at the safety features - how many airbags, anti-lock brakes, etc., as well as being honest about how good/bad a driver your child is. </p>
<p>It was important to us to get away from driving them all over creation. A car for the two of them to use meant they could get to/from school easily, to after school activities, lessons, weekend stuff. We wouldn’t be chained to their schedules. Our state has a graduated license system & they do pull over kids who are out too late or have extras in the car.</p>
<p>Roshke- interesting article. Our friend who is a Ca Hwy patrolman would not let his D or his wife drive a small compact lightweight car.
All of my teen drivers dented the car in the first 6 months of having a license. Lots of accidents in the school parking lot. For our youngest our mechanic found a good used car for us. Other kids drove my old minivan for the first year of driving. For younger D I was not ready to turn over my present car. We wanted for our own ease for her to have a car to drive. We were happy to find a good used car for her. It is older and with over 125,000 miles but got a good bill of health from our mechanic.
Older child is driving a used Hyundai Sonata. She looked at used Hondas and Toyotas but got a newer car with a lot less miles for quite a bit less money. The Hyundai at the time of purchase had only 40,000 miles. The Accords she looked at were already reaching 200,000 miles for the same price.</p>
<p>200,000 miles! That’s why I am looking at a car for young people. Originally, I was going to let her have my 4 year old volvo that is loaded with safety features for a year or two. I’d get a mini for myself. When the kid goes off to college, I’d get rid of Volvo. Back to a happy family with no spare car. After hearing so many people keeping their car so long, I am getting attached to the volvo.</p>
<p>Fiesta comes with a knee air bag as well as curtain, looks cute, Edmonds praises its acceleration and smooth shift in automatic transmission contrary to earlier posts.</p>
<p>“At the same time, the electronic programming that triggers a shift might still be in its infancy at Ford, as stop-and-go traffic seemed to flummox this automatic. There were times when its judgment about the timing of a shift didn’t match our own, and we couldn’t anticipate the way it would respond to changes in traffic patterns. Computer-chosen judgment calls about holding a gear, properly timing a smooth upshift, and conversely, providing a prompt and positive downshift to accelerate are sometimes misguided, late or absent altogether.”</p>
<p>Iglooo, have you actually driven the car? I’d take it for a ride and see what you think. The only way to see which view on the acceleration is most accurate is to take it for a spin. Poor to someone else might be fine to you. Or vice versa. You might also want to call and find out how much it would cost to insure a brand new car on a teenager. It’s not going to be cheap.</p>
<p>My current car has 92 horsepower. Handles like a dream and accelerates fine to me - I used to drive my parents Dodge Neon when I had my permit as a teenager and it had something like 125 HP or so… My car accelerates much much much better then that car ever did - that one was awful on hills and everything. I remember when I took my dad for a spin in my new car he was amazed by how well it accelerated. However, that being said, if you’re used to driving a Mustang or something and hop into my car, you’re going to be dissapointed by its lack of UMPH.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d buy a new car for a teenager. Actually, I personally wouldn’t buy any car for a teenager. I’d make them get a job and buy it on their own if they wanted one bad enough. But then again, that’s how I was raised. I remember when I bought my first car… I was 16 and it was $3,995. I kept it till I was 19 when I made an even trade with my mother (I got her car and she got my car. She traded mine in towards her new car. They both had the same trade value but her car was a few years newer then mine so I agreed to make the swap even though mine had less miles. I basically traded miles for years, in hope that the newer car would last longer even though it had more miles on it.) Kept that one till I was 21 when I bought my current car which I still have today at 28.</p>
<p>The Fiesta automatic transmission is a dual clutch transmission with no torque converter. It is more like an automated manual than a traditional automatic transmission. As such, it has better fuel economy than a traditional automatic transmission (and, with 6 gears, its top gear is higher than the 5 speed manual for better highway fuel economy).</p>
<p>However, trying to creep along slowly in traffic may not be very smooth. Recall that if one is using a manual transmission, the slowest speed one can go without slipping and wearing out the clutch is whatever idle speed in the lowest gear gives you. E.g. if that speed is 4mph, trying to move along at a continuous 2mph does not work very well. The Fiesta automatic has this same characteristic.</p>
<p>Pretty much all of the reviews of the Fiesta like the ride, handling, and fuel economy. They do not like the rear seat room as much. Acceleration is adequate, but not fast by today’s standards.</p>
<p>How much does the automobile insurance increase when you add the teen driver to your policy? Ours increased almost three fold. Is that normal?</p>
<p>We are not buying a car for the teen so to speak. We’ve been a one-car family so far. It worked in combination of the commuter train. When you have three drivers, it becomes much harder.</p>
<p>i think (and this is different from place to place) here in PA… if the kid doesn’t have their own car (ie, 3 cars for 3 people) then they base the rate for the kid on whatever the newest car is. so if you only have one car and it’s from 4 years ago, they figure their price out on that. If you tack on a 2011 something, they’ll figure their rate out based on that. now if you had 3 cars and one was 10 years old, you could probably say that one is “hers” and they would base her rate on that one and you and your spouse on the other 2. </p>
<p>Kids are expensive to insure because (no offense to the kids on here who are good drivers) they aren’t exactly the greatest drivers and are sometimes accident prone. The car I bought when I was 16 was at the time 12 years old so I didn’t carry collision on it and if I remember right I paid 80 dollars per month. My younger sister had purchased a Honda Civic when she was 16 and I think hers was 8 years old at the time and she paid over 100 a month for it… I don’t think she carried collision on hers either. If you’re buying a newer car or one with a loan you have to have that coverage, so I’m sure our rates would have been much much much higher - even today collision makes up almost half of my bill it seems. </p>
<p>I now pay about 500 for a whole year and that includes everything… so it’s about half of what it used to be when I was a kid and I have more coverage. So if yours went up that much, I can see it happening.</p>
<p>Igloo, just call up your agent and ask them what it would be if you were to hypothetically add on another vehicle. They should be able to tell you that right over the phone as long as you tell them what the make/model/etc is of the car(s) you are looking for. My mom did that for both my sister and I when we bought our first cars as well as when we bought our second cars so that we could take that into consideration before we purchased the vehicle.</p>
<p>I never took a drivers ed course when I was 16 but my sister did. Another nice thing with them is a lot of times your kid gets a discount on insurance after completing them. Definitely something to look into if she hasn’t.</p>
<p>It will vary from State to state. I think back when we added our kids out son was more to add than our daughter. Boys under 25 were considered more of a risk than girls. </p>
<p>Check with your insurance if they have any good student discounts. My kids were able to do a little written course with the insurance company for some discount, and then they got additional discount for a good student discount.</p>
<p>Now that D1 is away at college we’re looking to downsize from our aging minivan for our #2 car (our #1 is a Honda Cr-V which we just love). Test-drove a couple of Ford Fiestas. I didn’t like the automatic transmission at all, just felt sluggish and unresponsive; but the Fiesta with a stick is responsive, has plenty of zip, handles extremely well, and is just downright fun to drive. Lots to like in that car, but rear seat legroom isn’t one of them. Mazda 3 is better on that score, but several thousand dollars more. </p>
<p>Just drove a Kia Soul as a rental car. I hadn’t really been considering it, but the interior space was excellent, and it was surprisingly fun to drive; similar boxy style to a Scion XB or Honda Element but cheaper than either. Anyone have any experience with the Kia?</p>
<p>The Accord also costs $7,000 to $10,000 more than the Fiesta, and the Fiesta is rated at 5 mpg better in city driving and 4 mpg better in highway driving. That’s a huge cost differential. We can’t all afford an Accord.</p>
<p>It’s true that occupants of larger cars suffer fewer fatalities than occupants of smaller cars, but as safety features have improved, highway fatalities have dropped by roughly half in the last couple of decades, and the gap between subcompacts and fullsize cars has narrowed. In 2004, according to NHTSA, the occupant fatality rate per 100,000 vehicles was 16.85 for subcompacts—barely distinguishable from the rate for midsize SUVs (16.16) and only a little higher than for fullsize passenger cars (12.16). As recently as 1997, the fatality rate for subcompacts was almost double that for fullsize cars (22.59 subcompact, 13.66 fullsize—note the huge drop in fatality rates for subcompacts, compared to a much more modest drop for fullsize cars). In short, the segment of the market where safety improvements are having the greatest positive impact is small cars. </p>
<p>More important than armoring your kid with a couple of tons of steel, IMO, is to teach and insist on good safety habits: always use a seatbelt (roughly 60% of young adults who die in motor vehicle crashes aren’t wearing seatbelts), don’t drink and drive (roughly 40% of motor vehicle fatalities involve alcohol, and most of them are one-car crashes), don’t use a cellphone while driving (about 20% of young adult motor vehicle fatalities involve cell phone use). Don’t put your kid in a performance-oriented vehicle (which tempts speeding and other dangerous driving techniques), an SUV (more susceptible to rollovers), or a car without airbags (generally new cars are safer than older ones). Once you’ve done all that, then yes, other things equal, a big car will be slightly safer than a small one, so if you can afford the price difference, go for the Accord (or the Taurus, or whatever). But size alone is insufficient protection, and not nearly as important as the other factors I’ve named.</p>