It’s a great deal harder to launch into independent adulthood now than when I did it in the late 1980s. Even with a university degree, entry-level jobs are harder to come by and don’t pay as well, even adjusted for inflation. Rent has skyrocketed, taking up a larger portion of that smaller paycheck. Then there was the pandemic, which set back so many young adults who still lived with their parents, a couple of our kids included. We parented children into adulthood for far longer than we ever imagined. Some of this happened during the crushingly difficult years of 2018 through 2022, when we lost so many people we loved. But life kept moving forward, and our kids still needed help getting on their feet. Several cars, like the pictured 2010 Ford Focus, were key to some of them doing that.
For those kids, owning a car was both out of reach and a crucial step toward independence. Even though I’ve always had a strong bias against buying cars for kids, in these cases I had to admit that it materially helped them and was a good thing to do.
We weren’t willing to go into debt for any kid’s car, so we always bought with cash on hand. That led us to well-used cars. But when you need to get to work, a well-used car is better than no car.
The first car we gave to a kid had been Margaret’s daily driver when we were dating and first married. We gave it to Margaret’s daughter in about 2018. She drove it for a few years but didn’t take great care of it. She also had a few minor accidents in it, leaving it battered. But she had some affection for the car. She named it Fred, and it stuck. We all called it Fred, right up until we finally sold it in 2025.
As much fun as my 2006 Focus was to drive, this 2010 Focus was dull. It’s puzzling to me as these cars are built on the same platform. The windshields interchange, and while the door skins are different the frames are the same shape.
Yet this car has stood out as the reliability champion of all the cars we’ve owned. Margaret bought it with something like 65,000 miles on it — and then it just did its thing, day in and out, without complaint, for nearly 140,000 more miles. Along the way, outside of normal wear items, all it ever needed was an ignition cylinder, ignition coils, valve cover seal, and motor mounts. My mechanic did the ignition cylinder and I did the coils (I’m no mechanic but coils are extremely easy to swap out). I ignored the valve-cover seal as I discovered it was leaking oil into the spark plugs late in this car’s life and knew I’d be saying goodbye to it shortly. I also ignored the mounts — the resulting engine vibrations made Fred quite loud inside, but we all just lived with it, as you do with nonessential repairs on a very old car.
One of Margaret’s sons had made some deeply unwise choices late in high school. He kept reaping earned and unearned consequences from them all through his 20s. In 2021 he had worked his way into a job that promised stability, but he needed transportation. I found this Ford Escape that looked to be serviceable. It had a little body rust in the usual places and sat at 130,000 miles. But all the things I know to check on a used car checked out, and it ran right, tracked straight, and stopped well. $3,000 in cash let me take it home.
I drove the car daily for a few weeks to shake out anything that might be wrong with it. I was very surprised by how much fun this small SUV was to drive. I’m sure it helped a lot that this Escape was equipped with the 3.0-liter Duratec V6 engine — it was surprisingly responsive, and nimble too. It also had plenty of back-seat legroom and good usable space in the wayback. No wonder these were so plentiful on the roads while they were new. I almost wanted to keep it for myself!
After several months, another driver rear-ended our son in the Escape so hard that he suffered a severe concussion. He was unable to work for a few months. He lost his job and had to start over again.
We knew that in time he would claw his way back to the working world but wouldn’t have a way to get there. So we bought another used SUV for him, this 2002 Mercury Mountaineer.
Where the Escape was quick and light on its feet, the Mountaineer was ponderous and surprisingly slow. But the price was right, it seemed to run well, it was in very good cosmetic condition, and it was clean. I noticed that an “O/D OFF” light on the dash occasionally flickered. These trucks have a three-speed automatic transmission with overdrive, and a switch on the gearshift lever lets you turn overdrive off. When you do that, this light turns on. I figured something was faulty with the switch and didn’t worry about it. I checked all the things I know to check on an old car, and they checked out. I negotiated the price to $3,100 and drove it home.
I drove the Mountaineer around for a while to surface and fix any latent issues. An errand led me to merge onto an unusually short Interstate on-ramp. To get up to speed fast, I floored it. BOOM! The car bucked, the check-engine light blinked on, and the car ran rough. With my foot on the floor it managed just 35 miles per hour.
I limped it over to the repair shop I’ve used for the last 20 years. My mechanic looked it over and called me. “Aw Jimmy,” he began. He calls me Jimmy only when the news isn’t good. “I hooked it up to my diagnostic machine and it threw 17 codes. 17!”
I figured I was screwed, but I asked anyway. “Is there anything you can do?”
“Every likely repair is going to set you back a whole lot more than this car is worth. This truck has reached the end of the road, Jimmy.”
I dropped an F bomb. “Let me ask you a question. The O/D OFF light was sometimes flickering. Was that some sort of signal?”
He was silent for a moment. “I know it doesn’t make much sense, but on a Ford, that’s a clear sign that your transmission is in trouble.”
I dropped another F bomb.
“Listen,” he continued, “let me give you a phone number to call. I know a company that will buy this thing from you for top dollar given its condition.” When I called, they offered $400, I accepted, and after a week or so they came and got this hapless green truck.
And that’s how I blew $2,700 out of my butt and learned a valuable lesson about three-speed transmissions with overdrive.
A few weeks later my mechanic called. “Say, I just got this 2007 Honda CR-V and I’m fixing everything that’s wrong with it. Which isn’t much, these things are hard to kill. The young woman who owned it before beat it up pretty bad, and it has a lot of miles on it. But after I’m done I’m sure it’ll go another 100,000 miles. If you still need a car for your son, you can have first dibs on it. $4,100.”
We went out to drive it and were pleasantly surprised by how it felt like a much newer car. We bought it. But instead of it going to Margaret’s son, it went to her daughter instead.
She was still driving Fred and was worried his long-term reliability. I drove Fred around for a couple days and was blown away to see the odometer sitting at 197,000 miles — and by how loose and wheezy he had become. We sold the CR-V to our daughter at a price she could manage, and I took Fred back. Fred wouldn’t be good for the long haul, but it was useful for occasional use, so we kept it.
After my mom passed away in September 2022, just shy of nine months after we lost my daughter, my brother led the way in wrapping up my parents’ estate. They didn’t have much, but it still took several months to work through. We were the only heirs, and we divided everything down the middle. I told my brother that I’d like to take Mom’s 2015 Nissan Versa Note as part of my inheritance.
Mom bought the car with 15,000 miles on it. By the time she died, she had driven it only another 2,000 miles. This car was a cream puff.
I had a plan for Mom’s Note.
You may recall that I sold my 2006 Ford Focus to my son for a hundred bucks, but after a few months he was in an accident that totaled the car. His stepdad likes to buy cars at auction. Swinging into action, he found this 2000 Saturn with only 35,000 miles on it. My son made out great on the deal — insurance paid him $500 more for the Focus than the Saturn cost. Hoses and belts had grown brittle with age and needed replacing. After that was done, my son had a nearly new 20-year-old car. He drove it around for a few years and was reasonably happy with it.
When I got the Note, I made my son a deal: I’ll pass it on to you if you trade me your Saturn. This was a no-brainer for him. The Note was the top-trim SL version, with pushbutton start, keyless entry, navigation, backup camera, Bluetooth audio, and even heated front seats. The Note was also a lot more fun to drive than the Saturn.
But the Saturn still had a lot of life left in it. After a few months it went to Margaret’s son, who was relieved to get it.
The last of Margaret’s kids to become independent was, unsurprisingly, her youngest. The pandemic hit this kid the hardest from the perspective of slowing growth. But in time it became time. A car would enable the transition. Fred was pressed into service while we shopped for something with plenty of life left in it.
By this time it was 2024, and post-pandemic changes in the used-car market meant there were no $3,000 used cars that were any better than tired old Fred. After doing some looking around, I could see that I could get something suitable in the $5,000-$7,000 range.
I had just traded my 2013 Passat on my next car. I was disappointed in the Passat’s trade-in value, about $4,000. Looking for this used car, I realized I should have just kept the Passat to pass down to this kid!
I found this 2008 Honda Fit on a dealer’s lot for $6,000. It was a one-owner car with 130,000 miles on it. I figured that this Honda would serve very well for many more years yet.
The fly in the ointment was that it had a five-speed manual transmission. When you’re buying a used car on a tight budget, you have to remain open. This I explained to our young adult and promised I’d patiently teach them how to drive stick. Doing that transformed this kid who hated to drive into someone who enjoyed it.
That’s because the Fit was a blast to drive. It wasn’t quick, but if you flogged it hard you could make yourself believe it was. It handled crisply on its wee 14-inch tires. I was a little sad to give this Fit up, just as I had been with the Escape.
In the spring of 2025, the last of Margaret’s kids moved out and we were empty nested at last. We moved out of Margaret’s house, the one I had moved into eight years prior, and bought a large condo just for us. Normally people downsize at this phase of life. But we have a lot of kids, and now four grandchildren as well. We wanted a place where they could all come over with plenty of room.
I also bought myself the fun car I’ve always wanted. I’ll tell its story next. But the last of the kid-era cars to go was poor old Fred. He had 202,000 miles on him and creeping frame rust when some fellows from a junkyard came out, gave me $300 for him, and drove him away.
I thought the original version of the Escape was a better looking car. My daughter’s first car she bought was a five speed Nissan Note, but not the top of the line version. It was a good car for her starting out, but…. she was a real estate photographer at the time and miles added up. After the EPA warranty ran out (8 years or 80,000 miles) it needed a new catalytic converter. I bought one online and took it to the muffler shop and they determined that mid model year Nissan had switched catalytic converter suppliers so had to return the one that didn’t fit. Datsun/Nissan has burned the family twice.
The first Escape was the best looking one, period. I don’t know what Ford was thinking styling the current one.
“We have Porsche Macan at home.”
In all honesty, it wasn’t a terrible bet. Now that they’ve got the Bronco Sport—which very much looks and functions like the original two Escapes, including the rear opening glass—it makes sense to have the Escape be a completely different shape, in order to attract a different kind of buyer. It’s just that the market was comparatively apathetic because people love boxy, rugged-looking SUVs, and now the Escape is gone; production has ended for the abbreviated MY2026 run.
What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a Bronco Sport Hybrid. There was an Escape Hybrid (for generations 1, 2 and 4), and there is a Maverick Hybrid, both with and without AWD, so the Bronco Sport Hybrid seems like a no-brainer.
Without wanting to say too much on my own story – the cliche “it’s not a handout but a hand up” is very true and at the end can work out the best for everyone involved. And one of those stepping stones was a 2001 SL2. From a critical eye, I’ve had to wonder what Ford was thinking with the 2008-2011 Focus, but found myself glad to make do with two 20-year old cars because they were family hand-me-downs where their histories were known.
That has been our hope, that these free wheels would enable real independence.
There have been many articles published over the past couple of years that promote the theory that “boomers” have killed the economy for millenials (just google it if you want a better explanation). I’m a boomer and our two kids are millennials; so I can see first-hand how difficult today’s economy is for them to save and plan to buy homes, etc
I can also see the upside of the cliche that Matt S. posted — “it’s not a handout, but a hand up”. Our kids both worked and studied hard, graduated from good colleges with useful degrees — funded in large part by their own hard work and academic scholarships. My wife and I were fortunate to have worked in decent-paying professional jobs and always lived well within our means, and have been able to put together a sufficient retirement nest egg,
So we agreed to buy each of them cars – brand new cars – when they graduated. Car selection was totally my choice, with my decisions based in large part on getting great deals (in both cases I wound up with my out-the-door cost being well below dealer invoice thanks to rebates), and the promise of having a factory warranty. Having, decent, reliable cars has made it a lot easier for our kids to start out in the workplace – it’s one less big worry for them moving forward – and start saving towards eventual home ownership.
I feel like us helping our kids in their 20s has been a way of giving them their inheritance at a time when it can have outsized effects in their lives.
I had some friends who received new cars when they turned 16. Others received graduation cars. I think the parents who gave cars for college graduation had it right, if you’re giving a new car.
My brother and I received a small budget for a used car when we started driving. We did the same for our son; we put in half and he put in half from savings (well, the savings came from us but he had a little skin in the game.). It has been ten years and he’s still driving his car. It has needed repairs, but “better the devil you know.”
Wow. That’s where I’d draw the line – at a brand new car for a teenager or high school grad. My family was generous with that I always had wheels, but they were always old. Got my first new car at age 39 and most of that expense was on me.
In 1992, we bought a 1980 Dodge Aspen sedan with 65,000 miles on it. I had the car reupholstered and changed the windshield. It was equipped with A/C, automatic, slant six, AM/FM Stereo radio and not much else. Our daughter was graduating from high school. After she used it, each of our two sons used it. When my wife, Meline, and I would go to trade shows at The Javits Center in New York City, we would take the Aspen which I could park on the street. Nobody stole it! I regretted selling it. It just ran and ran – just not too fast.
That’s the great thing about some cars – so unwanted they’re theftproof!
Oiur 2 sons and 1 daughter each got well used but safe and dependable $3k cars when heading to college: an ’81 Volvo 240 (youngest son), ’87 SAAB 900 (older son), and ’83 Volvo 240 (daughter), all thoroughly vetted by me, an experienced car guy (and part time vintage car dealer). They took all 3 of them through college and grad school (all had academic scholarships and grants, so we weren’t totally bankrupted, just partially and not able to save much!),but all have great jobs and are well established and homeowners today, so it was a great investment
Those were some great $3,000 cars!
We had a “Fred” in our extended family, an unloved ’81 Honda Prelude with the dreadful Hondamatic. Rusty, faded and beat up but somehow it hung on for years. Originally a cheap commuter car for my Mom, it was passed to a succession of teenage nieces and nephews over about a dozen years. If it was nearby, I kept it running and tried to teach its current driver how to keep it alive. It finally got too rusty to be safe around 20 years ago.
When it’s time came my brother decided to go through the car and make sure no one had left anything behind that might contain personal information etc. He reported finding an interesting collection of things those kids, including his daughters, would not have wanted their parents to find!
I agree that kids starting out today have a much tougher row to hoe than late boomers like myself did, although it wasn’t quite as easy as the upcoming generation sometimes seem to believe.
You can never predict which car will end up being the one that hangs on and that all of the kids end up driving!
What a thoughtful article .
I only had one son to be concerned with driving, at that time we were incredibly broke (“poor”s a state on mind this Farm boys will never inhabit) plus I too felt that having him pay for his own vehicle, insurance and so on would be a good teaching tool, it did in his case .
Your ability to look ahead and plan accordingly makes me think you’d make a good general manager of business .
? Did the Versa Note have AC ? . those cars look cheap to me but also interest me .
As a VW Mechanic I think you dodged a serious bullet letting the Passat go before it imploded your wallet .
Congratulations on being successful empty nesters, I am but my Sweet has her grand daughter and great grandson living with her and as soon as our last foster boys spreads his wings she’ll move her daughter into his bedroom, I’m a Boomer too and it saddens me to have watched greed screw up America so badly .
I’ll have to give my house to my grand daughter as my son has two houses already and doesn’t want it =8-^ .
I used to give my son vehicles I no longer wanted, now I’m buying new cars back from him, re – habbing them and I plan o drive this mini SUV until I’m dead, he’s pretty rough on vehicles so I’m luxky to have gotten this one before he ruined it, no dents ! =8-) .
Good to hear others are likewise helping and teaching their children .
-Nate
The Note did have AC. It was surprisingly highly optioned. I drove a base Note another time and compared to Mom’s Note it was four wheels, an engine, and a transmission – and little more.
That’s the kind of story I want to hear about offering a young driver a manual transmission car!
My son essentially inherited a Honda Fit from his grandma, and it has turned out to be just about the perfect car for him as a graduate student living in a city. About the only thing he would want more is a manual transmission Fit.
I am thrilled that our youngest loves driving stick, after hating driving. Gives me hope for future generations!
I bought my first car when in high school. It was a Hillman Minks convertible. Great car, not fast, top speed 72 mph, downhill with a tail wind. One item of particular interest was the gearshift on the column. For first gear you pushed away and went up and then down to second and then you had to pull it toward you and go up to third and then go down to fourth, it took some getting used to.
I think some Citroens have similar weird shift patterns given their dash-mounted shifters.
For my son, it was a dark green ’99 Isuzu Trooper, which became known as ‘the beast’. Got it with 86,000 miles for $5,500. It was as comfortable as an old shoe, though a couple of problems with the electronic drive ‘brain’ became a little costly. Otherwise, ran strong. He had it for ten years and 40,000 miles but out of college, new work a longer commute away, fuel consumption as it was, the need for gaskets upcoming and just a general sense of ‘it’s time’ from our son, who loved the car but sensed it was time, sold it for $2,000. Some days I wish we’d kept and and we might have, but our son was living with us saving for his first home, the garage was full, and I couldn’t stand leaving it out in the Arizona heat all the time. The hard spare tire cover came with an airbrush painting of a wolf howling at the moon. We kept that; it’s hung up in the garage of his home.
For my daughter, she wanted a smaller car but ‘raised up a little’, after years riding in minivans or SUVs. For, again, $5,500, bought on Christmas Eve and hidden until Christmas day we got her a Toyota Matrix XR (bigger engine), ‘Trixie’ as it became known, with 102,000 miles. They sat a little higher. It was as trouble-free as you’d expect for a Toyota, nothing major, though my daughter had a few more ‘dings’ put in her car. We ended up shipping it out to Connecticut when she went to college, as she had a part-time job requiring just a little travel. After 20,000 miles and 6 years, we sold it to the family of one of her sorority sisters. I literally signed the title over in the lobby outside the graduation ceremony, for $2,500.
Great stories and deals! Seems to me that if a child/loved one can get 6 – 10 years out of a vehicle and then you can sell it for half of what you paid for it (yeah, inflation…but realistically most of us don’t think about that in day to day life over something like a vehicle) that’s a win.
A Matrix is a great used car for a kid. Corolla reliability and the ability to carry a vast amount of stuff.
A Matrix is a great used car for a 60 year old (me)! My 85 year old aunt still has hers, purchased new and she religiously maintains it. There just isn’t anything else on the current car market quite like it.
Agreed. There used to be an interesting set of products that were somewhere between a wagon and a hatchback. The Matrix and Vibe sisters were two of them, but also the Caliber and the original Elantra Touring. And maybe the HHR. Cheap. Cheerful (less so the Caliber, but still). Practical.
The last product in that approximate form factor was the gen. 2 MINI Countryman, but (though BMW Group products are a lot more reliable than they used to be) it is comparatively more expensive to own than any of those and really a premium car.
Oldest daughter got a 2018 Focus Titanium 67,000 odometer – great car, Ford replaces clutch. Paid $7,000 6 years ago.
Twin daughter got 2007 Avalon 135,000 odometer – great car. Paid $7,000 2 years ago.
Twin son got a 2001 F-150 XL 160,000 odometer – great truck. Paid $5,000 2 years ago.
They drive them to campus daily. I they pay their gas, insurance and help cover expenses. They have jobs, tuition paid through scholarships.
I’m doing OK. Over the past 6 years I’ve probably paid about $4000 on tires, shocks when needed. The truck needed some sensors replaced.
You’re giving your kids great support it sounds like.
What strikes me is that you were careful in your hand up. I knew too many children that got what they wanted, not necessarily what might have been the best choice.
Without too much depth, our son went through a very tough time two years back, where AI took away the career he’d known for 15+ years.
His 2002 BMW was at the point of needing costly repairs (he’d replaced the transmission and it overheated while I was driving to a dealer as a trade in)
Mom and I are 62 and I’m disabled so money is tight. But we were able to gift him our 2004 Grand Marquis.
It is sad to me to see how hard things are for my two kids, son in law and grandson. Things were very different for my wife and I for sure.
Great article
I’ve always been crystal clear that when I’m buying you a car, you get what I choose, period. You can take it from me and immediately sell it if you want something different. But that would be unwise because I chose something that will serve you well.
I’ve shared here, but I had worked and saved up some money (if my old memory serves me it was about $2000) and I was ready to pay for my own car. But dad lost everything in 1979, and never told me that he’d needed that money. So my first car was a 73 Montego MX Villager wagon, baby blue with wood sides!!
Dad made things right by selling that car and finding me a really nice 77 Cutlass Supreme brougham.
Agreed. My parents were—as I would come to realize later—lower-middle class, and we struggled to live in the suburbs. I got a car at 18 that had been sitting around, and it wasn’t remotely nice. But I had wealthy classmates that got brand new Charger R/Ts and F-150 Raptors and Camaros…and they drove them so irresponsibly. And sometimes, they’d wreck them in a way that was obviously negligent and would receive replacement cars in short order, sometimes nicer or faster than the ones they’d wrecked.
I had one classmate whose parents were from Japan. They were pretty rich, but did not speak great English. My classmate had convinced them he was legally allowed to drive alone on a driver’s permit at the age of 15.5 (he was not) and so they had gifted him and given him access to his brand-new 2007 Lexus IS 350 some months early.
He totaled it street racing, weeks in.
What did they replace it with? A 2008 BMW M3 Coupe.
When I was selling my 2006 Range Rover Supercharged, one particular woman and her daughter came and kicked the tires. The woman openly volunteered that her daughter had wrecked her prior car—a Hummer H2—by speeding around the corner too quickly and rolling it.
It took everything in me not to call the mother a negligent idiot.
I guess I can understand getting a fast or fun or expensive car for a child that you know is grateful and experienced and responsible enough to regard it with the respect it deserves. I cannot understand getting one for a child that you *know* is not either of those things. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those kids are dead now, from car accidents. It’s very sad.
Looks like you took the wise middle path on helping your children (well except for the Mountaineer but that was mostly bad luck). We just visited our kids this weekend, their 2013 and 2016 Focii are doing well, as are they. We’ll be back next month for daughter’s iron ring ceremony (Canadian engineer thing) and I’ll be a proud engineering papa.
It’s always interesting the responses you get from people when they find out you’re still helping kids in their early 20’s. Some positive, some VERY negative. Our thing is if you’re trying your best and getting results of course we will support you.
I haven’t publicly talked about how much we’re helping our kids, until this article. So I’ve avoided any criticism!
I have found that there is a small sweet spot in older used cars, and you seem to have been pretty consistent in finding it. But I suppose that with as many winners as you have found, something like the Mountaineer was bound to happen.
Two of our kids got a lot of miles out of cars that had belonged to grandparents. That’s often an unbeatable source when it is an option.
We’ve been pretty lucky, to be sure. These cars haven’t been trouble free, but except for the Mountaineer none of their troubles have been more than a cash-strapped young adult could handle.
As my mother was widowed I had to buy my own first car, a Triumph Vitesse, for the princely sum of £80 (about $120) as an MOT (safety inspection) failure. After repairing it I enjoyed it for the next 6 years, until I left the UK for Germany. It taught me about the need to budget for repairs, insurance, tax, etc. and to look after it.
As my son is only 9 years old I wonder what the choices will be when he can drive. He’s an enthusiast already and says he would like to build an old VW with me. I’d love to do that, but whilst I’m happy enough in my old Ghia, I do worry about the safety of that. So it’ll probably have to be something pragmatic, solid and not too fast, but sufficiently interesting for him. I think, judging from his great coordination with sports and RC models, that he will be a good driver and one thing I will do is put him through some kind of driving safety/skill course and take him ice driving to teach him the finer aspects of of car control.
To rebuild an old VW together sounds like a wonderful project!
I wish either of my parents was as engaged in my early car choices and able to help me. My first car was an undermaintained 1990 Honda Accord EX that my parents bought in 1998 and that was my mother’s daily until 2006. (I got it in 2011, after it had sat and decayed for 5 years. They did the minimum to get it up and running). Because it was in rough shape, the timing belt snapped and bent up the valves, and that was that.
My second car was a 1997 Volkswagen Jetta GLX VR6 that I bought under duress (the duress being my mother’s insistence) and that was running on three out of six cylinders. That car wore its welcome out after its A/C compressor exploded and was replaced with a bypass pulley; I realized a car with no A/C wasn’t gonna work in Oklahoma summer.
That compelled me to get my first nice, brand-new car, a 2014 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI, as soon as it was prudent to do so.
All three of those are outlined here.
The message with my parents was: we’ll help you as much as we can, but there isn’t money to get you the sort of cars you like. If you want those, you’re going to have to earn them yourself. And I have. In the intervening ~12 years, I’ve had all manner of fun, decadent cars. But I know my parents would have helped me out with decent, vetted and curated cars earlier in my life—like you and Margaret did for your children—if they’d been in a position to do so.
The cars we bought for our kids were indeed at least decent runners with some life left in them. I’m a little jealous of your SportWagen!
My son got my ’01 Acura 3.2TL. Had about 180K on it but I had maintained it religiously for 15 years. Made it all the way to the end of his Senior year of college, when it ate a tranny at 250K. That car owed us nothing. Replaced with a 2023 Genesis G70 2.0T when he got his MBA.
Daughter got an ’06 Honda Element in high school with 202K that made it to 232K and her sophomore year in college when it got hit and totaled by an F350. Replaced with a ’16 Honda CR-V with 145K. She loved the Element, but the CR-V has all the current safety necessities and is a much better vehicle. We’ll replace that when she gets out of grad school.
Good choices!
Of the four used cars that we bought over time for our four kids, three came via connections at my business; all were good deals.
The first was a 1996 Infiniti G20 with manual transmission. Bought with 93,000 miles on the ticker, all four kids learned to drive a manual on it. When our elder daughter graduated college we brought her a new CRV and the G20 was retired at about 160,000 mile sand still on the original clutch.
Next up was another G20, a 1999 and also a manual. 80,000 miles when purchased, about 150,000 when sold and replaced by a new WRX when our eldest son graduated.
Next was there first automatic, a 1999 Infiniti I30. Maybe 70,000 miles at purchase and about 140,000 when sold. Replaced by a new Subaru Forester at he next daughter’s graduation.
Finally, a former company car, a 2003 Highlander with 70,000 miles and a real steal. We kept it to 180,000 miles and gave it to a brother-in-law with car needy kids, They ran it up to about 280,000. This was replaced by another WRX.
None of these cars required much in the way of repairs. Key comment… manual transmissions mean that your kid’s friends likely can’t borrow the car!
There’s real wisdom in your last sentence!