Cars for Kids

My daughter is going to turn sixteen in about eight weeks.  I’m not going to tediously rhapsodize about how time flies, nor will I yammer about my precious baby going from Cheerio-snarfing to AP History in the blink of an eye.  Sixteen years did not go by in the blink of an eye (editorial note: if it’s just one eye blinking, isn’t that a wink?).  We lived in those years, enjoyed them, were exhausted by them, and fully felt all sixteen of ‘em as they passed.  All along the way, we’ve been the type of overindulgent parents you see in magazines, the ones who go out and buy neglect-o-matic devices to keep baby happy, from bouncy chairs to doorway jumper-swings to floor mats with toys designed to enhance her intelligence and turn her into a miniature astrophysicist by the time she’s four. 

But now it’s car-shopping time, and my traditionally overindulgent streak is bashing directly into my intense dislike for making big decisions and spending fortunes.

Not that we have to spend a fortune here.  In my family, it is tradition for the kid’s first car to be the most embarrassing piece of rolling excrement any teenager has had the misfortune to drive.  I drove a baby-blue, 1977 Camaro in the mid-1980s, which meant the car was in that sad zone when a vehicle is way past new-and-hip, but has to wait another twenty years to become retro-hip.  In fact, I’m pretty sure the 1977 Camaro was one of the many vehicles never to experience a retro-hip phase, and instead became a parts-donor to more interesting cars around the country.  My brother, meanwhile, was driving my dad’s old Ford Econoline van, the kind of van pre-dated the “minivan” by decades.  It was black, with over-tinted windows, and had orange carpeting inside, and little orange flame accents around the windows.  It made a noise like a Harley, which made it easy to hear for four or five blocks away, perfect advance warning for cleaning up and repairing damages before our parents got home. It had two huge CB antennae, having been owned by a CB radio enthusiast before entering its luckless existence as the chief transporter of drunken football players and their bimbo dates.  I ended up taking that car to college for my first year or two.

Those cars were not just transportation.  They formed a part of our identity, made statements about our personalities – “I hate walking so much that I would even drive this car just to avoid hoofing twelve blocks home,” and, “Go ahead and laugh, I know it’s a piece of shit” – and they formed the basis of a thousand stories that still crack me up when my mind wanders over to them during meetings.  They did not cause debt, unlike cool cars that were new and impressive.  They probably made no discernible financial dents at all, other than repair bills from their constant breakdowns.

But that was thirty years ago, and it was Plantation, Florida, where the map is easily represented using graph paper -- and that includes topology.  The biggest hill in town, no exaggeration, was the turnpike on-ramp.  The streets formed right angles and the street next to 3^rd Street was 4^th Street, if you can imagine.  The streets were wide and flat and you could see other vehicles approaching for miles, and there were plenty of places to pull over if you broke down, a fact I learned through the multiple failures of the Crap-mobiles I drove. The longest drive any of us ever took was ten miles straight east, and that got us to the ocean.  If we’d gone ten miles west, we would have been appetizers at an all-alligator dinner bonanza.  Most of my life took place within a five-mile radius of home, except those beach trips on weekends.

Cassie, on the other hand, is growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta.  It’s a nasty environment for learning to drive, as it lacks every positive trait about driving in Plantation.  Her drive to school, around 11 miles, can include the Perimeter, which is a large highway that should be named “Crash Dummy Circle.”  Atlanta has ice storms, rain, perpetual construction, and potholes that could easily accommodate a good chunk of a Volkswagen.  None of the streets are easy to navigate; even the first turn out of our cul-de-sac is a tricky one.  Nothing is flat, straight, or logical, and every street is named {choose two or more of: peach briar forest glen stone wood oak haven crest tree grove view cliff vista pine fox chase trace trail}.  Most roads have no turn lanes and no shoulders.  All in all, it’s a bad environment, and I want my kid to be well-equipped to survive it.

So she needs a car nimble enough to avoid trouble, but not so fast as to be uncontrollable. Something safe, with great gas mileage (eventually she will have to pay for gas for the damned thing), and able to carry at least a bit of junk, as she will probably take it to college.  Something we can actually afford, and – maybe I’m being just a little bit bitter here – something that will cause her a character-building quantity of humiliation when she has to drive it.