My daughter is 17 in a month and while I know we can’t start driving lessons yet, we’re starting to look at options for her. For various reasons she won’t be able to drive my car, she can drive my wife’s but preference would be for a small, safe, reliable, sub £2K car (that’s not a target, but a limit)

Obvs petrol, manual

Keeping a family tradition it should also be a hideous colour ( i had a beige one, my wife’s first car was yellow)

Fiesta.

Cheap, loads about, easy to repair, plenty in scrapyards to scavenge body parts from.

And if you are lucky you can get one in that Kermit green they did! 🙂

Older Yaris

Panda, they did that in a minging yellow colour. Failing that Citroen C1/Peugeot 107.

Loads of options around, just look on Autotrader for price range and put engine size up to 1.2 – I also filtered down to less than 60k miles and there’s still a fair few cars within spitting distance of here.

If my experience of 17 year old daughters is anything to go by she’ll refuse to drive a perfectly servicible car and will instead insist on a new Audi A2, a customised Mini or a Fiat 500.

Gran’s 2005 1.2 Fiesta which was bought new, MOT’d last Saturday after doing 7 miles in the year, lived almost it’s entire life in a garage, has 10170 miles on it, has been serviced every year by the Ford main dealer and looks exactly like it did when it drove out of the factory, well, there’s no WAY she’ll be driving THAT.

She’ll just have to get the bus instead.

Fiat Panda is a good shout, they’re not fancy but are good for learning in and are very cheap to run/repair.

Worth considering a really cheap Civic or Focus too. Both reliable, a bit more protection given the larger size and barely anything in it in terms of cost to insure.

Maybe something like this
https://www.dkeng.co.uk/ferrari-sales/1265/prestige_cars/ferrari_488_pista_spider.html

Or this if she prefers yellow

https://www.dkeng.co.uk/ferrari-sales/1269/blue_chip_competition_cars/dino_246_gt.html

Ford KA. or a newer mini, friend is looking at one soon as has been quoted £400 to insure with a learner driver as a named person on the policy.

Ford KA. or a newer mini, friend is looking at one soon as has been quoted £400 to insure with a learner driver as a named person on the policy.

Get a quote based on what it will be when they have passed their test. The differences can be massive even between outwardly similar cars.

Learner driver insurance is pretty cheap in comparison.

and barely anything in it in terms of cost to insure.

I’ve yet to see anything which is cheap to insure for a 17 year old.

For various reasons she won’t be able to drive my car, she can drive my wife’s but preference would be for a small, safe, reliable, sub £2K car (that’s not a target, but a limit)

I’m in a similar position – yet with a very different conclusion. Wife’s car is company car which isn’t covered for him (17 a month ago). My car is a bit of a tank and shiny and new – logically you’d not give it to a learner. However, I figure if he can drive this he can drive anything. Covid has prevented any formal lessons but he has been out with me (before the latest restrictions). I’m glad I didn’t buy a car for him as it would be sitting for at least a couple of months doing nothing and costing money. I doubt I can get him to test standard myself, so we need to wait for proper instruction to get there and then the test queue to subside after the backlog; if he goes to Uni before that happens (likely) I suspect it will actually be next summer before he passes. I’d go out in the wife’s car first and see how that goes – if you are terrified or she’s a nervous wreck there will be little point in buying a car until the instructor gets a chance to teach them some basics. If you get on like a house on fire it might be worth it if access to your wife’s car is a limitation.

3 sons and none of them had a car nor did they drive either of ours.

IMO makes no/little difference to how many lessons they’ll need, tests passed nor the quality of their driving afterwards.

Just get them booked with an instructor, in their car.

Less hassle, less cost, less risk.

85hp Skoda Fabia.

Uncool, but cheap to insure, better upright driving position and driver visibility than anything else we looked at, and cheaper to buy as well.

We really wanted to like the Fiesta/Yaris etc, but he just really preferred the Fabia.

I’d buy a Panda. In fact I’m looking for excuses to buy a 4×4 version right now even though I’m double your daughters age.

Personally I’d do this…

Just get them booked with an instructor, in their car.

Less hassle, less cost, less risk.

Just get them booked with an instructor, in their car.

Good luck with that. You might find there’s a current backlog of people looking for lessons.

Also, book a theory test for them now. There’s a waiting list of months for those too.

@poly – I mean barely anything in it between the cost of insuring a Fiesta class car or a cheap Focus or Civic.

It’ll be excruciatingly expensive either way 😀

Definitely get the theory test booked now.

We found I think 8-10 lessons with an instructor before either of us were confident for me to take him out. Those extra couple of sessions seem to have helped him. Should have had his test yesterday.

We partly got him another car because our own are automatic and he needs to have a manual license, plus he is building his no claims bonus on his own policy. Also, if he has his own car he can sort himself out – in normal times it was pretty common for us to be in 3 separate places 2-3 nights a week, and frankly, after 10 years of that with him and his younger sister, I’m sick of it 🤣

I’m in exactly the same situation as the OP, but my query is, how have you all approached the insurance? My current thinking, cheap small car,in my name, with wife and learner daughter on insurance. Is there a better ( cheaper) way to do this?

If it was me I would be looking at an Aygo (or the Citroen equivalent) – wheels on each corner (barely any front or rear overhang) and great all-round visibility.

I took out a seperate learners insurance policy in my daughters name for my car. Cheapest was with RAC and covers her for five months or until she passes her test.

Was £230-ish

I did a thread and everything

Learner Driver Insurance

When my daughter learnt to drive 3 years ago we found it was cheaper to insure a newer VW Up! than an older model. It’s swings and roundabouts between higher insurance costs or higher depreciation but the added reliability and safety of a newer model swung it!
We used Elephant for insurance. Less than £1000 fully comp (no black box) the first year after passing her test and about £600 now, despite a **** driving into her on a roundabout one day short of a year’s driving. They have been excellent!

Get some quotes on potential cars. Older tend to be more expensive, as do more’common/popular’ cars with youngsters, so Corsas and Fiestas more expensive.

Aygo etc should be a good price and all are funky enough. The Hyundai i10/Piccanto come out cheap on insurance.

We went through this in 2020. Quite pleased with how it all worked out.

Son was 17 in December 2019. He was put on my wifes (Fiat 500) car insurance for about £20 admin fee. I used this time (2 weeks) to teach him to start & stop.

He bought his own Vauxhall Corsa (sub 1L eco something) in December 2019 and we bought him a batch of lessons. The corsa cost £300 for the year to insure as a learner with no box or anything. Unfortunately due to Covid, everything got stretched out with cancelled lessons and tests. He passed in September 2020. We were charged £500 to cover him fully comp until his insurance renewal in December. So the years insurance cost us £800 for his car.

His renewal came through with 1yrs NCD at £2000 which we were not happy with. My wife shopped around and got it for £800 fully comp.

My boy is on his way to his second years NCD, bought his own car with refereeing money (We pay his insurance as he saves us £80 per month in bus fares for school for him and my daughter). He loves his car, looks after it very well and makes me proud every time i see him in it because he really did show maturity to get it.

suburbanreuben – i think thats who we use. My wife spoke to them and mentioned a couple of other quotes and they said they were all part of same company too. Havent had to use them so nice to hear

How about a nice 9-year-old Yaris?

Anyone ever rejected a used car?

🙂

Clio or a Focus.

Series 3 landrover with a full harness seatbelt.

She’ll be safe in that.

Similar situation here. My concern with Ka and Panda is safety – they have some of the lowest safety ratings of modern cars. I’m thinking a Fiesta or similar as well, for slightly better safety.

IMO makes no/little difference to how many lessons they’ll need, tests passed nor the quality of their driving afterwards

Couldn’t disagree more with this. A big thing to being a safer driver when learning is miles on the road. You absolutely need lessons but you also need to have spent time on the road where you can encounter problems and build up your skills.
With the challenges around getting an instructor after lockdown it’ll be even more important to have access to a car.

IMO makes no/little difference to how many lessons they’ll need, tests passed nor the quality of their driving afterwards.

The statistics say otherwise.

And the advice is:

https://www.insurethebox.com/can-parents-encourage-safer-driving-amongst-children/

If you want to teach her road safety and defensive driving buy her a 125 scooter.

I typed that partly in jest, but I have done this with both my sons and it worked. Given the standard of driving I see from most female drivers between 17 and 30 it may not be such a bad idea really.

One of my friends has recently had to go through the whole ‘getting their first car’ thing for his daughter and really struggled to get her to contemplate anything other than a white A1, which was out of the picture budget-wise anyway!

They ended up with an 11 plate Fabia.

My 18 year old daughter passed her test in October last year. While she was learning we insured her on our Focus to get some driving practice in between proper lessons.

Once she’d passed her test she got loads of quotes on many different cars and the cheapest quotes were for petrol C1/107/Aygo.

She ended up buying a ’08 Citroen C1 for £1700 and paid £960 to insure it. It’s not in a hideous colour though, it’s black!

Panda, my daughters one is still going after being crashed and abused by multiple learners! She sold it and bought a mini which has proved nothing but problems.

Chevy for the win.

Matiz, turquoise. For my son.
Bought for £700 , years MOT. Insurance for learning £300 pa

One day he will be able to take his test.
First one in March – cancelled Lockdown
Rescheduled November – cancelled Lockdown
Rescheduled February 17th – just waiting for cancelation…. FFS

If you are anywhere near Central Scotland buy our 2006 VW Polo!
It’s the 1.2 3-cyl job.
Only downside it’s red, my first car was a lovely beige Marina with the full vinyl interior.

We had a Corsa 1.4 (weirdly, they seem cheaper to insure than the 1.2) which is my wife’s car. Used Marmalade to insure for it my son to drive as a learner (seemed a pretty cheap way to do it as it’s the learner that’s insured and you are not using your own insurance). Gave him a load of time out on the road with either me or the missus to get him used to driving in public and practicing things like parking and hill starts. Ended up with him only having to have a relatively small number of lessons and he passed first time. Been on the insurance pretty much since then as a named driver. Fully comp for us all (me, wife, son and daughter) is around £300 per year.

Only downside it’s red, my first car was a lovely beige Marina with the full vinyl interior

That wasn’t beige… it was “Sandglow” the marketing department spent ages coming up with that name (rather than picking a colour less like vomit)