Car talk: I like having kids to pass cars down to so we don’t have to go through the hassle of a private sale or rip-off of a trade-in. Oldest D (college senior) has our 2003 Honda Pilot with 200,000 miles. It just needed some expensive work. The mechanic recommended not fixing some of what they found because it isn’t worth it. The next service is at 210,000, but he suggested just keep up maintenance and drive until it dies. His best guess was that she can hopefully get another 20-30,000 miles. I like mechanics who suggest that you spend less money! H drives a VW diesel, and we haven’t decided yet whether to do the fix or the buy-back. S gets his license next month and then the battle is on between him and D17 over the “extra” car.
Hi all! My son is in this class and I have 100+ pages to catch up on to see what I missed since you started the thread. We have 2 old cars, and I’m hoping to get a third from my parents soon, but we have time before we need it (license at 17).
Welcome mom2cats.
@snoozn, those Honda’s are fantastic. Our S18 will be getting his license Dec. 10 and inheriting our baby blue 2004 Odyssey with 250,000 miles. It’s in great shape so he and his younger sister (D22) will be riding to school in style!
^^Lol said no kid ever (about a minivan).
@MotherofDragons we bought our oldest (D15) a new car when she got her license bc she was driving herself and her younger siblings 35 minutes each way to and from school everyday and we wanted the safest, most air bags, hightest safety rating car to carry them around. She got in 3 or 4 slight fender benders that first year (including backing into our garage door and taking a large chunk out of a tree in our front yard).
Lesson learned. D18 will be going ‘well worn’ to carry him through any kinks as a new driver. He figures a minivan is better than no car at all. And this coming from a kid who is at a private school where some of the kids drive mercedes and bmw’s to school.
@VaNcBorder the SUV I bought the girls is statistically the safest you can get over the past 20 years, according to the NTSB and the IIHS (and the german version of those safety bureaus).
It has side curtain air bags, decelerated front air bags, backup camera, traction control, limited slip differential, and it weighs nearly 6k lbs (physics wins!). You don’t have to buy new to get a very safe car for your kids. 
(as you know with your Odyssey!)
The girls don’t like it, though, and think it’s deeply uncool to drive-a “mom car”. Too bad! :D.
My plan was to let DD18 drive the 2004 Sienna because it is a bit cheaper to insure her with that than the other choice - a 2004 Camry. But she really wanted to drive the smaller vehicle (and I can’t blame her). So she is driving the Camry and paying the difference in her insurance. As long as she stays accident and ticket free I will pay the bulk of the premium. Hopefully for a long time. She has had her license for a month so far and is really enjoying her freedom. DS15 was a homebody and never went anywhere other than school or scouts.
Our kid declined the offer of a free 2004 matrix from his grandparents. 92k miles, well maintained - like grandparents owned it for pete’s sake. At the time, the car wasn’t cool enough for him. He regrets that choice. Learning experience on steroids.
Finding a car for D16 was an issue because I was not giving up my mini van, not that she wanted a mini van. We wanted her to have a car with safety features, good gas mileage, and she had to be able to get her concert grand harp in and out of it independently. It was fun taking the harp to the car dealership to make sure it fit! Believe it or not if you move the the passenger seats all the way up, a harp fits in a Rav 4. Because of the harp, she needs the car at school with her. DS18 and DS20 go to school 45 minutes away so we got another car so DS could drive himself and his brother to school and EC’s, end up with a Scion. DS18 has been told he won’t be taking the car to college because his brother will need it.
D18 is still inching her way through the driver’s ed class she needs to do to get her permit, so I figure we are looking at summer at the very earliest before we have to deal with the extra car issue. By then she’ll only have a year left before she leaves and we’d be left with an extra car for 2 years until D22 turns 16 so, not sure we’ll bother.
Meanwhile I’m happy driving my 2011 we bought new, and which now has over 100k miles on it. I often describe myself as a professional driver because I spend so much time driving, I guess it’s true!
All this car talk is fun. We somehow have become the owners of four cars. This from someone who grew up with one car for four drivers. Got a hand-me-down '99 Camry from my mom with only 78000 miles on it about three years ago when D15 got her license. My '06 Pilot has developed issues like a dying catalytic converter, an expensive bad thing to have go wrong here in California. I ended up getting a new car but we kept the Pilot for S18 until it can’t pass its smog check. He wanted to keep it mostly because his head touches the ceiling of the Camry. We plan to dump both cars when the kids are both off to college and not coming home for summers or when an expensive, but mandatory, repair arises. These are the best cars to have because they can get dinged and dented and we really don’t care.
My DD learned to drive in my minivan but, when it came time to take her road test, we realized the van could not be driven around the cones they use here to simulate parallel parking. Back in my day we did it on the street! In front of everyone! Anyway …
She loved my husband’s Accord, passed her test in it and that was that. Plus the HS student parking lot hasn’t been maintained since the Kennedy administration and it’s easier to have a smaller car there. I still have her text me when she gets there/text me when she leaves. And probably will for at least the next 12 years.
The car doesn’t have bluetooth or even an AUX input for music. She has had to use the radio - the horrors! Has anyone bought one of those bluetooth adapters you can use in older cars, maybe plugging it into the lighter? I’m thinking that might be a nice Christmas present.
@bearcatfan, if the car has a tape player then you can buy an adapter thing that goes in the tape player at just about any drug store.
My 2006 Sienna’s stereo died and my unhandy husband put in a new one with Bluetooth and a usb input. There’s a wired mic for the Bluetooth and it works great! My son won’t drive for another year, but I’ll feel safe if he’s in the van and he likes that he can play spotify.
The bluetooth dongles are really cheap – some can be had for $15. They’re kind of a pain though because you have to find an unused radio frequency and the connections aren’t always stable. I had one 7 or 8 years ago and didn’t like it very much but maybe they’ve improved since then.
DS took out the stereo from his car and replaced it with one with an aux input and maybe bluetooth capability. He’s not super duper handy but didn’t think it was that hard.
DH had a satellite radio receiver installed in his car last Christmas (it was one of his gifts). He had the installation done profesionally because his car is a convertible and it required some tricky wiring work.
My new car doesn’t even have an AUX input anymore. Just bluetooth and 2 USB ports, plus an SD slot. Oh and the ability to import media files onto the hard drive. Technology! I spend most of my time listening to satellite radio anyway although I do listen to podcasts and audio books when I drive long distances.
D16 drove our 2005 Toyota Camry with 120K miles which was supposed to be handed down to D18 when D16 left for college this fall. But somehow D18 has commandeered the 2007 Lexus with 86K miles that my husband was driving. I am in a 2009 Toyota Venza with 110K miles. We are in serious need of newer cars but tuition is a thing.
So, I just spent the majority of today researching schools for our kid. And the result is I am clueless and freaked. Our '17er was/is a rock solid B kid who luckily has a sport schools want. Hated those limits a year ago and I so want them back! The schools I thought were targets for our '18 girl - uhm, not so much. Smart, smart, smart white girl from the northeast with a humanities focus, kick-ass extracurricular resume. I thought it was going to be easy - not. Much more challenging than I expected.
Well… engage!
@oldbrookie what is D18 interested in? Sounds like a challenge, but this site can help!
@oldbrookie Have you checked out the Colleges that Change Lives book and web site?