[TeeJayHoward]

My first car was an '86 Dodge 600 Turbo. It was slow. It didn't handle well. It met all of the requirements ya'll are putting forth. It still ended up parked on top of a fire hydrant while driving too fast. More power would have just meant that I'd have replaced the suspension from hopping the curb instead of the engine from the oil pan puncture. The replacement was a '71 Super Beetle. Even slower. I can't recall if the mountain I tossed it off ruined that one, or if the rust claimed it first. I totalled a car a year until my mid 20s, I think. It got to the point where I wasn't allowed to keep another car on my parent's land until I "emptied a parking spot first". The 323 I crashed into a gas station, the 3000GT whose engine I blew up in Denver, the 280Z I lit on fire... I churned through cars like crazy. When I got out of college and wanted something nice, that's when I stopped acting like a tool on the roads.

I'll tell ya right now, if you were to offer to pay half of a new Miata to my 16-year-old self, I'd be more careful with that car than I EVER was with anything else I'd driven. The guys I knew in school who had nice cars didn't do dumb things. Either they built those cars themselves with their folks in the years approaching their 16th birthday, or they spent 2-3 years saving up to buy it (generally with a matching parental contribution). They knew the value of their rides and how screwed they'd be trying to get a like replacement.

...Except for the off-roading crowd. They seemed to take great pleasure in banging the snot out of their vehicles. The worse it looked, the happier they were. 'Course, you're not street racing in an XJ on 35" tires with half a ton of metal replacing your front and rear bumpers. You're barely able to move when the light turns green.

The kids who were doing dumb things in their cars in high school were the kids who had middle-of-the-pack vehicles, typically Grandma's old sedan or the truck Dad drove until he got a new one. They didn't have to put any effort into acquiring the vehicle, and thus didn't respect it. I was one of these kids. If you wrecked it, eh, whatever. Take the insurance check and go get another one. Hell, car shopping is fun. If you're handed a turd and told to be thankful, well... It's gonna get treated like a turd.