1/2 ton pickup for 16 yr. son

Status
Not open for further replies.
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Quote:

I want to get a truck for safety reasons.Size counts in a wreck.Any price for gas in trade for a life.

Why hand a bazooka to a first time gun owner.

Handing a 6500lb vehicle to a new driver "may" foster poor driving habits, by reinforcing a feeling of invincibility, just as every vehicle I pass "off the road" during a snowstorm is 4wd.


Also since he's up higher he'll have a better view of the road.

Good?

No.

Everyone adapts and he'll spend time texting on his cellphone.

When he drives an ordinary car he won't have the skills to keep track of traffic in his blind spots.
 
Originally Posted By: Bambam
Wait til Ford introduces the new F-150,Chevy and Dodge trucks will be plentiful and cheap!
I owned a 79 f150 and I haven't been impressed with any of the newer models. My wife has a 2002 Superduty I am not impressed .The cab forward design which puts part of the engine under the windshield is really stupid. I do not know how Ford could cut the quality any more .
 
Originally Posted By: Spitty
Originally Posted By: mudsling
I want to get a truck for safety reasons.Size counts in a wreck.Any price for gas in trade for a life.


Do the stats show that Trucks are indeed safer?

no, they don't. w/o a load in the back, a truck is unbalanced and top heavy. lots of people use that myth to buy hummers also; take a search around the 'net and you'll see what happens to hummers in accidents, not pretty. thew bigger the vehicle, the more mass, the more energy to dissipate. better to teach the kid how to drive and be responsible. young drivers die in accidents because of their OWN negligence.
my kid's 1st car will be a slow FWD sedan w/ as many air bags as will fit, and satellite tracking so I know what he's doing.
 
The bigger and heavier they are, the harder they are to turn and stop. I'd highly recommend getting vehicle for a 16 year old that is more forgiving of boneheaded driving mistakes. Stopping distance and rollover resistance would be top on my list. Side and frontal impact ratings are important too, to help protect him from other boneheads. But I see no data suggesting that trucks are safer than cars unless you want to count which one can do the most damage to the front of a convenience store. They take longer to stop, require slower speeds to manage a turn and they're top heavy. Not good for someone who is at times bound to be paying attention to everything BUT the road.
 
The original poster never said what decision he made with the truck. Hoping he's not buying what the kid wants by spoiling him and not what he needs to learn/appreciate.

32.gif


My sister does this with the above example with her 17 yr old kid. Her other son has had his bike stolen due to negligence on his part by leaving it in a front yard of a neighbor, a replacement bike run over by being parked behind her giant Tahoe that she ran over, and he's on his third bike. All within 6 months. At $300 a piece. If he was my son, I not put up with that stuff. The kid is 11 years old. Last week, he lost his $250 PSP game system. They are going to buy him another one.
 
Quote:
Houston is a big city a v six would make it hard to pull on fwys or get out of the way if need be.


Then I would suggest the...

Quote:
1 67 camaro drag car 468cid


How fast do people drive in Houston? I thought Atlanta was bad, but I never have a problem merging with my little 110hp Scion XB box on wheels.
 
"...you'll see what happens to hummers in accidents, not pretty."

In a tragic accident a couple of years ago an older couple in a Nissan Sentra stalled on the highway, on a blind corner as I recall, and they were hit by a Hummer. The Hummer had very little damage but their car was totaled and they were both killed.
 
Originally Posted By: blackcherry06
The bigger and heavier they are, the harder they are to turn and stop. I'd highly recommend getting vehicle for a 16 year old that is more forgiving of boneheaded driving mistakes.


That means a corolla with a brake pad upgrade.
 
On the subject of first cars, I inherited my mom's 1982 Honda Accord, Second Generation when I went off to school. I drove it alot when I was got my license, too. My old man didn't see any reason for me to have my "own" set of wheels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Accord#Second_generation_.281981.E2.80.9385.29

A manual transmission. It was a great car. I probably should have kept the thing. It would probably still be running. Looking at the pics of them, I actually like the look of them better than the current Accords.

4 cylinders, I still managed to "get out of my own way." I don't recall this being thought of as a slow car. I was paying for my own gas, what would I have needed with a monster truck, anyway?

The kind of trucks that were very popular with young drivers then in the early 80s, as I recall were the small 4-cylinder Toyota pickups. Those were some nice little trucks. I still see a few on the road. This was all well before the current monster truck and SUV craze kicked off.

My brother's daily driver is a Ford Ranger, I think dating back to the late 1990s. I think he had a radiator replaced, but that is about it. Not bad.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: mudsling
Houston is a big city a v six would make it hard to pull on fwys or get out of the way if need be.



That makes no sense.
21.gif


I grew up in the Bay Area of California and my first car there was an early 80's Renault Alliance with the 1.7L. A really [censored] car at that. I think the car had less than 100 horsepower, yet I managed to survive driving in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, etc. One of my vehicles I travel to construction sites in is a 00' Saturn 4 banger with 100 horsepower. I manage just fine in towns like Kansas City, Memphis, Shreveport, Denver, Milwaukee, etc. Heck, there are 4 cylinders out there that produce more than 100 hp per liter...S2000, etc. Obviously the kid is not going to paying for his own gas at 3.39 a gallon in his V-8 pickup.
 
Originally Posted By: Saturn_Fan
Originally Posted By: mudsling
Houston is a big city a v six would make it hard to pull on fwys or get out of the way if need be.



That makes no sense.
21.gif


I grew up in the Bay Area of California and my first car there was an early 80's Renault Alliance with the 1.7L. A really [censored] car at that. I think the car had less than 100 horsepower, yet I managed to survive driving in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, etc. One of my vehicles I travel to construction sites in is a 00' Saturn 4 banger with 100 horsepower. I manage just fine in towns like Kansas City, Memphis, Shreveport, Denver, Milwaukee, etc. Heck, there are 4 cylinders out there that produce more than 100 hp per liter...S2000, etc. Obviously the kid is not going to paying for his own gas at 3.39 a gallon in his V-8 pickup.
Not paying for the truck either. My dad died and wanted my son to get his 1996 Toy p/u 39,000 miles , almost cherry, I don't think my son at 16 appreciates the truck. Nothing like working for your first vehicle. But then my wife and daughter don't appreciate anything either.
 
A quick search through autotrader.com, just to see what is available for my hypothetical teenage son.

1992 Mazda B series pickup 2WD B2200, 108,000 miles, $3,650
AT Car ID: AT-E47E138
I note that I can get a large selection of this kind of vehicle, Ranger, Chevy S-10, etc. newer and lower mileage if the budget increased to the $5,000 range. No shortage of options here.

An old Volvo would be a good option. Somebody above talked about a used Crown Vic; I can see the logic behind that one, too.

There's also the no small expense of insuring a teenage driver. Stastically you can expect some kind of fender bender from a rookie driver. Better to have that happen in a vehicle where I could do some driveway body shop repair work, and not really worry about "how it looks."
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: mudsling
I want to get a truck for safety reasons.Size counts in a wreck.Any price for gas in trade for a life.


Safest truck out there right now in the 1/2 ton is the Ford, PERIOD. Only one with the perfect IIHS rating for '05 and up.

VERY well built trucks, the Silvercreek tests (they are on Youtube) are interesting to watch as well.
 
Originally Posted By: Steve S
Originally Posted By: Bambam
Wait til Ford introduces the new F-150,Chevy and Dodge trucks will be plentiful and cheap!
I owned a 79 f150 and I haven't been impressed with any of the newer models. My wife has a 2002 Superduty I am not impressed .The cab forward design which puts part of the engine under the windshield is really stupid. I do not know how Ford could cut the quality any more .


Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth has been doing the cab-forward thing on basically everything they've built LONG before Ford's been doing it. The last gen F-bodies were also this way.

Pretty common for most manufacturers nowadays.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

D
  • Locked
Late '90s - early '00s 1/2 ton pickups: problems?
2
Replies
23
Views
15K
dnastrau
Back
Top