It’s true, you never forget your first. Not the time driving it, fixing it, polishing it, modifying it, or the time you spent before you even grabbed the keys for the first time. Those hours spent researching and daydreaming, and the miles you covered trying to track down the car you’d eventually take home.
But as soon as we’ve got some experience under our belts and some extra cash in our wallets most of us quickly move on to something faster and more powerful. I can’t say I’ve spent much time in the past 25 years thinking about puny 1.0-liter superminis, other than when I’ve had to drive them for work purposes, like conducting magazine comparison tests.
That’s all changed, though, and not because my speeding habit has finally caught up with me in a major way. No, it’s because my son will soon be learning to drive, and suddenly my mind is racing through all the used-car possibilities that not a lot of money will buy. Strangely, he doesn’t actually seem that interested (“what’s the point, it’s ages away”), but I definitely am.
Related: What’s The First Car That You Remember From Your Childhood?
I don’t know what getting insurance is like for new drivers in the U.S. (I suspect more relaxed), but here in the UK the premiums are brutal. A 17-year old could be looking at paying £2,000 ($2,600) for a year’s cover for even the most basic, dog-slow city car, depending on where they live, which effectively limits them to very low-powered Toyota Aygo or Ford Fiesta-sized cars.
Still, I bet we can manage to buy something that’s fun to drive, cheap to run and simple enough for the boy to learn some wrenching skills and modify. I’m picturing a Renaultsport Clio lookalike fashioned out of a basic Clio, a regular R50 (or later R56) Mini with Cooper S bits or maybe a super-lightweight Peugeot 106 build that makes even a Rallye seem fat. Then again, maybe my son has other ideas. They still seem like modern cars to me, but they might as well be Cugnot’s 1769 steam trike as far as he’s concerned.
But while I’m trawling through the classifieds, why don’t you tell us what you’d buy if you had to do it all again. Would you go for the same car you went for first time around or is there something else that you regret not buying back then, or something better that’s come along since?