February 7th 2012 Cecil Helton

My Teen Driver: We’ve Bought His First Car

My child's first car - a 1984 Porsche 944.

Over the last few weeks as the family has been counting down to my oldest child’s sixteenth birthday, we’ve spent countless hours looking for and checking out potential cars for him.

Like many parents, beyond the worry of putting your child behind the wheel of a car, the biggest issues were who was paying for his first car, and what was the car insurance premium going to cost.

I agreed to match my son dollar for dollar, meaning every dollar he saved towards his first car would be two. I also agreed to pay the cost of insuring the car. Since he’s going to be on his own in terms of keeping gas in it – for the most part, that is – I spent quite a few hours attempting to stress fuel economy to him as well.

At first, we were looking at older American cars, specifically Chrysler products from the 1960s and 1970s. We never found a car of that sort that was in good condition and also fit the budget. And in general, none of them offered anything resembling a decent fuel economy.

Since I’ll be paying to insure him, each time we looked at a car, we also got a quote on what it’d cost to insure. And even though there are basic rules as to how insurers price a policy, we saw wide variations in the cost of premiums from car to car.

On some cars we simply decided we’d just forgo full-coverage and simply get liability and comprehensive coverage. Others were priced decently, even with collision added to the mix, so we figured full-coverage might be the way to go.

Then early last week, my son found an old Porsche 914. It was incredibly affordable, even with a full-coverage policy. That changed my son’s focus from older American cars to looking at Porsches from the 1980s. And after weeks of searching, we’ve finally bought his first car – a Porsche 944.

Not only is the car very affordable to insure with a 16 year old driver – $600 every six months with liability, collision and comprehensive coverage, but it also gets 30+ mpg on the highway.

I’m picking the car up later this afternoon in Tennessee, and my son is scheduled to take his permit test on Wednesday. And barring any issues there, we’ll “officially” begin his 60 hours of required supervised driving this weekend.