The Top Cars for Teens
For parents and teens, choosing a car for a first-time driver can be an anxiety-filled process. Teens want a sporty car they won't be embarrassed to drive to school. Parents want safety, safety, safety.Cross a new car off the list because the chances of a new driver putting a dent in it, or worse, are roughly 1 in 4.
Late-model used cars offer a just-right combination of modest power and performance, top-notch crash scores, advanced safety features and decent reliability scores that safety experts say parents should seek in any car intended for a new driver.
To come up with the best rides for a teen driver, I crunched the numbers from several key sources of data and safety rankings: safety and crash-test information from the websites of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and quality and reliability scores from Consumer Reports, the nonprofit product-analysis publisher. Among the vehicles best suited for teen drivers: the Honda Accord (24 points,) the Ford Fusion (22 points) and the Toyota Camry (22 points).
Recommended Cars for Teens
You won't see pickups, sports cars, or tiny subcompacts on the list. Pickups are too easy to roll. Sports cars tempt young drivers to drive too fast. Subcompacts don't put enough metal between your kid and obstacles they may hit, even though today's small cars are dramatically better engineered than the tiny hatchbacks baby boomers drove in the '70s and '80s.
For the first time, this year, the Insurance Institute says it can recommend certain sport utility vehicles as safe choices for young drivers. In the past, the institute's experts said the SUVs' propensity to roll over made them a risky option.
Newer SUVs and crossovers—wagons that ride on the chassis of cars—that are equipped with electronic stability control now have fatality rates as low or lower than most classes of cars, according to a new IIHS analysis of federal crash data.
"In the past, because [SUVs] are a bit top heavy, they could be twitchy in handling and it was easy to get out of control and roll them over," says the institute's president, Adrian Lund. The IIHS data now shows SUVs with stability control have 70% fewer single-vehicle rollover crashes than those without the technology, Mr. Lund says. SUVs also stand higher off the ground, he says, so more of the force hits the frame below the driver's seat in a side-on crash.
The Insurance Institute's website has vehicle ratings based on its crash tests. You can search by vehicle class. I looked for models that have "good" ratings for front and side impact tests. Then I turned to Consumer Reports and looked up reliability ratings for those cars. If one of my first picks had a below average reliability rating from Consumer Reports, it was out.
Finally, I threw in points for stars earned on the federal government's crash tests. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hands out up to 20 stars for a car's ability to protect the driver and front passenger in front and side-impact collisions.
Among the midsize cars that scored well are the Accord, the Fusion and the Camry. Your kid may grouse that these are three of the blandest cars on the road, but they are reliable, four-cylinder cars that aren't too big or too small, and are easily serviced. All these cars, at three or four years old, will cost between $15,000 and $19,000, depending on mileage, condition and model year. With Toyotas, be sure to take the Vehicle Identification Number to a dealer to check that all the recalls Toyota ordered were performed.
An older, second-hand luxury car is a good way to give a teen a vehicle with a full complement of safety technology. The trick is finding one that isn't too powerful. Among those that got through the filter: the sedate Lexus ES, an Audi A4 and a 2004-2008 Acura TL.
The Acura TL gets 24 points in my scoring system mainly because it has a top rating for reliability from Consumer Reports. A caveat with this car: The six-cylinder engine is rated at 258 horsepower—too much for a new driver. That's why four-cylinder versions of the Camry, Accord, Fusion and the Chevy Malibu are so appealing. Among those, the Accord scores highest because of superior reliability ratings and strong NHTSA crash-test scores.
Some of the crossover sport utilities that did well are the Acura MDX, Honda Pilot, Subaru Forester, and newer Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV 4 models with stability control.
Some vehicles didn't make my list because they aren't rated in one or more of the three rankings I used. The 2008-2010 BMW X3 crossover, for example, has good scores from the Insurance Institute, and a better than average reliability rating from Consumer Reports. But the NHTSA hasn't posted crash-test results. Odds are it would do well: Most BMW models get 19 out of 20 stars on the NHTSA front and side-impact crash-test ratings.
It's tempting to buy a teen a very cheap, older car or a small pickup. But old cars often don't have safety technology such as side air bags, or anti-lock brakes, that can greatly improve the odds of avoiding or surviving a crash. Pickups have rollover death rates that are more than twice as high as those for cars, according to federal data.
Teens may wind up driving family haulers like SUVs because it's the vehicle their parents have handy to lend. Keep in mind you don't want teens hauling lots of friends around or they'll be distracted and get in trouble. Some states now restrict how many passengers a teen driver may carry in the first year or two on the road.
David Champion, senior director of Consumer Reports' auto-testing division, says he would still steer young drivers away from large SUVs. "I'm not sure all-wheel drive necessarily is a good thing," he says.
In slick conditions, all-wheel drive can get a vehicle going faster than an inexperienced driver can handle, and when the kid hits the brakes, the vehicle will skid.
Write to Joseph B. White at joseph.white@wsj.com, reference this article.
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