True conversation with my oldest.
Kid: when I get my license, will I have a car to drive?
Me: sure, you can use my van (it was a smaller Nissan Quest fully loaded)
Kid: I wouldn’t be caught DEAD driving that van.
Pregnant pause because kid knew that wasn’t such a smart comment!
Kid: well…actually it’s a pretty nice van…has a great stereo and sunroof, and is fully loaded.
Me: ??♀️
Why would this be terrible? The only downside i see is that they need to be careful to keep the car charged. But then…if they have a gas car, they need to keep gas in it.
@Nhatrang if I survived driving a 1973 bright yellow Ford Maverick when I was in high school, I 'm sure your son can handle a Lexus. ?
(I should add I’m still a little annoyed that my dad bought a brand new 1982 Camaro, the first year the model was revamped, that my younger sister got to drive as a high school senior!! I did get the car eventually, though. )
Sell the GX460, buy a Tesla for yourself, and buy a used Ford Focus with a manual transmission for him? (Or a used VW e-Golf, Chevrolet Spark EV, Ford Focus electric, etc. if you want him in an electric vehicle.)
It is always risky buying a used car. It comes down to it being the luck of the draw. My mechanic told me that he bought a vehicle for his son, checked it out very carefully, and it needed some costly necessary repair in a month or two.
So, yes, you can buy a $1000 special and get lucky, have no problems with it for a year, maybe even 2,3. But the odds are not good. As you move up the price ladder, if you get the car examined, do your research on the reliability of the model, check out the cargo, you can get increasing odds of a getting a car that is less likely to have problems , but you can also get trouble just waiting to happen.
We have done well with Carmax in buying used cars, however, they are not inexpensive. We got 3 Subaru’s and a Mazda from them at the $10k mark several years ago, and did well with all of them. But those prices have escalated recently, and there is no negotiation with CarMax.
It’s a balancing act, trying to find as safe and reliable of a car one can get for the lowest price. Getting full insurance , (required if car is financed ) is really expensive for young people. My one son got a used car from a co-worker moving away for $4k that did well for 2 years, and was minimally covered by insurance before selling it for $1.5k when it started developing some issues that he didn’t want to support. He got a new car for a very good price, 0% financing but the full insurance coverages required on it—ouch!
So you look around, check out your options and pick the best deal available when you need that car. There is no one size fits all option. I’m doing without a car because I’ve not been able to find a low enough cost option for a seasonal realizable car, for myself.
My son was a little too excited at the prospect of getting one of my old Honda Odysseys (I have two with a combined value of maybe 7K). I remember packing all my friends into my little subcompact car when I was his age and had visions of him doing the same with a van sized cargo capacity. I’m a lot more comfortable with him having a mid-sized sedan!
Notify a dealership or two that you trust that you are looking to swap the Lexus even (or very close there to) for a smaller vehicle for your son. Order your Tesla once the swap has occurred. You can drive the smaller car in the period in between. Worked well for us. Another option would be to advertise the Lexus in your neighborhood. There probably is a family that has outgrown a smaller vehicle that would be perfect for your son. Everyone wins!
I know a few people who leased base model Civics for their kids. Under $200/month. No maintenance and they knew the car need was for 2-3 years and then the kids were off to college with no car.
Also know a few people who went the used car route. Worked out well for some; no so well for others. Some of them wished they went the Civic lease route.
I bought my son a new base model Civic. I wanted anti-lock brakes and to get a used one with them would have been about $7k under the cost of new (with potential maintenance on the used ones). He still has it post-college graduation. Making a car payment to himself now. I suggested to him that he keep doing that and run the Civic in the ground which is probably another 7-10 years. Up to him though he is frugal.
We had a Honda minivan and had the kids rated on that which kept insurance costs down. Other than the van, we are car people rather than truck people (my parents and siblings all drive trucks and can’t figure out why I drive a car). Insuance costs were never bad for us. But our agent told us the kids had to keep the good student discount (which really isn’t a high bar to meet) and no accidents/tickets. Thankfully my kids made it through the high risk/cost years with no issues.
When dh was in the market for a new car, we weren’t quite ready to make the decision on what he wanted. His previous car, an Acura MDX was a bit of a lemon for us with constant repairs so we didnt want to keep it for the kids. We ended up buying a 5 y/o Acura TSX from our mechanic with about 40K. Dh drive it for about 2 years until D1 got her license. He then got a new car for himself and the Acura became the kid car. Though it’s now almost 11 years old and has 136K miles on it, its a pretty nice car - has backup camera, Bluetooth, etc. It is a bit “fast” for teenagers. It has scratches and dings from years of parking at the high school parking lot and the interior is showing lots of wear, but it’s been very reliable and handles very well. I love driving it - it’s a nice break from my heavy and large SUV.
It survived a scary accident when S1 picked D1 up from work last summer and hydroplaned on the highway. He spun out and landed in the median facing traffic-just missed hitting a concrete overpass by about 30 feet, instead landing in some shrubbery, with the car only suffering some scratches. I thank God they were not in my top heavy SUV as it could’ve been a different story.
S1 got his license right when D1 left for college and had the nerve to tell me he thought the Acura was a “girl” car and wanted to drive my 4 y/o SUV to school every day. Um no. I told him he was lucky to even have sole use of a car at all. That shut him up. S2 now has his license so he gets to use the Acura for h.s. now with the older 2 away at school. I’m hoping it will live long enough for D2 to use it when she gets her license in about 19 months.
D1 will really need a car next year her senior year of college and would be ecstatic to take the Acura. I think at that point, we would rather keep the Acura home in case it starts becoming unreliable and get her a newer car. I’ve been dropping hints to Dh that it would be awesome if 83 y/o MIL, who lives in San Francisco, decides to give up driving next year. We could buy her low mileage Volvo from her. She hates driving in the city and I’m sure will stop driving in a year or two anyway. it would be perfect solution for us. If that doesn’t work out, we will look at Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas for D1. Leasing sounds like an interesting possibility for her but I’d have to do more research.
I haven’t read every post in this thread, so please move on if my comment is redundant!
Old used cars scare me, mostly because I’m not mechanically inclined at all. OP probably knows a great deal more than me. If so, disregard…
However, my cautionary tale…
My parents gave me their used Honda Civic when I was a younger adult. My dad was a mechanical engineer, so he had maintained it well. After a couple of years driving it, I made a long trip driving from Chicago to East Tennessee and back. Since I’m fairly ignorant about cars (and this one had around 120,000 miles on it) I took it to a Honda dealership before the trip and asked them to check everything that should be checked and to replace ANYTHING that should be replaced. I emphasized I was going on a long trip. They did a couple of minor tweaks and said I was good to go.
On the way back to Chicago, my timing belt broke and I had no idea what was happening… just that I suddenly had no breaks and no power at 75 MPH! Terrifying! I woke my passenger, who had the presence of mind to slowly pull my parking break while I steered to the shoulder. Fortunately, we were on a stretch of flat, uncrowded Indiana farmland. Had the belt broken forty miles earlier in the middle of Indianapolis or a few hundred miles earlier in the Appalachians we might well be dead.
The engine was destroyed but we felt very lucky!
When I told my mom, she said, "Oh, yes, Honda recommends replacing the timing belt at 100,00 miles! The Honda dealership I patronized seems to have not gotten that message.
The passenger is now my husband, and we prefer to buy new, with a warranty!
When and if we buy our daughter a car, it probably won’t be more than a couple of years old, if that, with a known history. No amount of savings is worth the risk to my kid’s life, or my peace of mind!
Yes, we gave D our newest car, one that was a mere 6 years old and a Volvo as well. We figured she needed the most reliable car we had since she’d by in heavy traffic LA.
Our two other cars were closer to 15 years old at the time. She was a SR in college and wouldn’t be parking in HS parking lots—streets of LA instead. She’s still using the car many years since college graduation and the mechanic says many, many more good years left.
@HImom Did you pay to ship the car from HI to CA?
Yes, I paid to ship a car from HI to San Diego for S and to LA for D. I got a bargain of $500 in a covered ship per car to San Diego and extra cost to LA.
S paid to have a car shipped SF to DC as well.
It’s bc I don’t want the car to do all the thinking for him. He should build a habit of looking at the mirror before changing lanes, quick reaction to traffic and not relying on the Tesla to override him, that sort of things.
Maybe I am overthinking it.
Anyway I haven’t thought of selling the Lexus and buy him a smaller car. That’s a good option if I don’t have put more money into it.
Thanks everyone!
My daugther has several safety features on her Subaru. Not to the level of self driving like Tesla. But she tries very hard to avoid being corrected (reminds me a little of driving antique cars at the amusement park as a kid – trying hard to avoid hitting the guide in the center of the track). She laughs at me when I drive it and get a beep when I forget to use turn signal to change lanes. But the safety features are there if she would need them. May depend on the kid in terms of how they would use/react to the various safety features.
Tesla Autopilot should be used as a high-function cruise control, not a self-driving mechanism. The driver needs to be in control of the car at all times.
Here a junior driver can only have one unrelated passenger under the age of 18 in the car with them. No driving after 11 pm and before 5 am.
We always got our cars at about 3 yrs old, with around 60,000 miles on it. People trade them in then because the warranty expires.
But we only drive about 6,000 miles a year so they are usually pretty good until they get up to 90,000 miles or so.
Then we had exhaust, water pump, and rust problems.
I’m sorry I don’t know too much about leasing a car, is there a down payment, any other issues to think about?
I would let my kids drive the safest car possible instead of my hand me down. I got D1 a mini cooper as her first car. It was stick, but had all the bells and whistles in the car. Where we lived we had a lot of country roads and major highways, so I wanted to make sure her car wasn’t going to have any issues.
We made used Corollas (Matrix) for our kids. Reliable as a hammer, and body work is not that expensive, lol. Got a pax side mirror fully auto replaced for $150. The other driver’s insurance paid for the bumper ($1200). Corollas Matrix are safe and reliable cars and fit a tri bike inside easily. I’d buy another in a heartbeat but Toyota does not make them anymore so my new wheels are a hybrid-electric Metro bus. ?
@Nhatrang - before you plunk down cash on that Tesla for your kid, check out the prices for side mirror and bumper replacement on Teslas because I guarantee you will be doing one or the other if your kid gets to drive it. 
Teslas, even with the cheapest battery, accelerate like crazy… easy to collect speeding tix.
Toyota now calls the hatchback version of the Corolla the Corolla hatchback: https://www.toyota.com/corollahatchback/
There were also some years when Toyota’s entry in that market segment was called the Scion iM.