Monday, October 04, 2010

The Decision Process: A Car for My Child

A young one comes of an age where freedom of movement is required to conduct the day to day business of growing up, becoming educated, and taking those first faltering steps toward independence and self-sufficiency. Suddenly, the nest is a too small world for the youngster and inroads into the commerece, travel, and geography of the adult world must be made. But how best to begin?

With a well cared for, quality, safe used vehicle, of course.

Choosing one puts quite an onus upon any father not blinded by glitzy car ads, government bureaucratic doubespeak, and grass-hut treehugger propaganda (re: safety and survivability on public roads) and wanting to provide his child with reliable personal transport while balancing cost, performance, safety, and economy.

Step one: Weed out all the small cars. This is not an equivocal statement, and it is not for the simple reason that small cars will kill your kids. See below:

Yes, they will kill and mutilate your kids.

This still leaves a lot of options; SUV, midsize car, large car, Fullsized pickup, midsized pickup, van (forget it. no shag wagons).

Next up: Mid sized and Full sized Pickups are a good option for their mass, durability, and structural integrity, but suffer from the lack of weight over the rear wheels which makes them prone to a skid on wet/slick pavement. Throw them out unless you can teach your child to reliably control a vehicle in that situation.

So that leaves us with large SUV, midsized SUV, midsized car, and full sized car.

While large SUV's are currently inexpensive to buy, inexpensive to insure, and massive (thereby benefiting lavishly from Newton's first law in a vehicle to vehicle collision) they are horrendously fuel inefficient which doen't mesh well with a teenager's budget. Mid sized SUV's benefit to a lesser extent from Newton, but don't really improve much upon the inefficiency problem of large SUV's.

Midsized cars are a viable option with vanilla safety ratings and very good efficiency, but Sir Newton frowns ever so slightly upon them.

A full sized car is typically safer than a midsize with very little mileage penalty and some are even known for a specific design on safety, quality construction, careful and intelligent engineering. Sadly, these are typically made by Europeans.....

The Options:
1: Volvo
2: Mercedes
3: BMW

These are high-end brands with great reputations and each has a different primary focus while maintaining a firm grip on other aspects of quality vehicle design and manufacture. I chose the Mercedes e320.








Rationale to follow.

24 comments:

thimscool said...

Will you equip it with taser and ejection for the passenger seat?

Wendy said...

My first car was $600...

Nate said...

rational to follow....  let me offer a preview...

"i wanted a cool car that would make nate jealous."

JACIII said...

Please,
It's the tractor envy I gotcha on. Especially afte Jeb saw all those Farmalls drag crappy green tractors through the dust.

JACIII said...

Mine was a rust bucket on four flat tires.

Professor Hale said...

I have been in several accidents in small cars.  They crumpled as designed.  I did not.  I have no trouble trusting any mid-sized 4 door car in the Honda Accord/ Toyota Camry class.  Safe (within reason), efficient, practical and reliable.  Maintenance is cheap and easy to do and the car still keeps running when you neglect to change the oil (or even check it) for a long time.  I have to face this myself this year and have already decided to cascade my own honda accord to my daughter.  (I might get something a little less practical for myself).

Professor Hale said...

Mine was $100.  1967 Rambler Rebel. 343  V-8 and a power convertable top.  $800 and 7 months later, I had it in working condition.  It was junk.  But it was MY junk.

JACIII said...

My Grandfather had a '68 rebel rambler, PH. Gawd what a POS.

JACIII said...

Trunk Monkey, TC.

EP said...

Exuse My ignorance JAC, but what was pulling those cables. The Tractor was still. Was that some kind of steam hydraulics?

EP said...

I am acutaully more interested in how they did it than what happened.

EP said...

Maybe one was pulling the other into it through pulley's, makes the most sense.

EP said...

OK got if ixed now. Use fullscreen or dwonload.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38803370/Crash-Cars-Model

Susan said...

Don't let your little bro bust your chops too hard JAC, you did very well for your baby girl. She now has an awesome set of wheels. That blue color is very nice.

I dare say the hardest thing you will now have to deal with is telling her she can't have all of her homegirls riding along with her for a while.

What kind of sound system does the car have? I can't believe I am asking that instead of one of the guys.

Wendy said...

Haha, I remember that commercial.

WaterBoy said...

JACIII: "Step one: Weed out all the small cars."

Step zero:  Teach her the proper way to drive.  (Which I have no doubt you already did.)

Proper driving awareness will increase the chances that structural integrity will matter less.

Mikesbo said...

My first car was a 12-year-old '68 Mustang I paid $250 for, then spent a whole summer patching the rust holes with bondo with my dad. It looked very cool until up until its second winter when it started rusting out from under the bondo... I drove it through college, though.

Michael Maier said...

I second that. But it still only takes that micro-second of inattention.

Michael Maier said...

I second that. But it still only takes that micro-second of inattention.

Michael Maier said...

I second that. But it still only takes that micro-second of inattention.

thimscool said...

Alright, JAC... what's your take on Aqua Budah?

black said...

What year is it?

JACIII said...

1997

black said...

Thanks... my oldest is nine, but I know the time is going to fly by FAST.  Never hurts to compile the research early...