Sports car as a first car is a terrible idea. Maybe if she loves Porsche, I would get her a used Macan instead of a 911. I thought I was crazy to get a 992 before my 30s… I drove a 2012 Honda Odyssey as my first car and now a 992 after saving for years and I am honestly scared to drive it when it gets here
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Oh I won’t be here in 14 years unless a hurricane makes some room…
Yea that was an insurance flip. Def didn’t make out well on it either…my parents car insurance rates doubled for a couple years too
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My wife and I both have extensive experience dealing with product defect lawsuits involving automobiles. I can’t tell you the number of cases we’ve come across involving dead teens or teens with traumatic brain injuries (worse than death IMHO) from car accidents. Under no circumstances should you purchase a teenager a 15-20 year old 911. If budget is not a concern, put her in a late model XC90 or a full-size Benz SUV with the smallest engine option available. If it has to be a Porsche, put her in a base late-model Cayenne. Modern 911s are extremely safe, but when you are dealing with high enough speeds (which teens are not smart enough to appreciate), none of that matters and physics takes over. We would always ask our expert witnesses (automotive engineers) what vehicle they would put their kids in, and the near-unanimous response was a Benz or Volvo.
There was a telling video an engineer brought to a presentation about 10-12 years ago (that I can’t locate) of a crash test between two vehicles the IIHS rated as very safe - a Smart car and an S-Class. As you can probably imagine, one of those vehicles performed extremely poorly despite its safety ratings. The bottom line is that no matter what safety features a car like a 911 has, it is at a huge disadvantage by virtue of its size and weight, especially considering the number of substantially larger vehicles on the road. Add in the likelihood of a teenage driving too fast/aggressively, and you are taking on a massive risk.
Tomorrow’s lesson: your teenager in a 911 caused an accident permanently disabling a 10-year-old, who now has an 8-figure claim for future medical care. How are you feeling about your $300k automobile liability limit now?
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True story and very well said. Anyone with a teenage driver on their policy should have a great umbrella policy I would hope.
But hey the 911 is really fun for my brand new driver !
I just bought my daughter a Civic EX as a first car, now I even feel 180 horses is too many.
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yes
10char
in 2014 my dad wanted to buy me a ~2003 SL 500 as my “college car”… It had 99 problems and starting up was one of them. I ended up with a 2013 Jetta in warranty that’s still driving today with 150k miles…
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Thank you for sharing your experience and all of that helpful info, @cars5711.
My only quibble w/ this is that, outside of worst-scenario situations (where bigger is better for the driver of that vehicle), I worry about a full-ish sized SUV being a bit unwieldly for a new driver (although, if the OP lives in a suburb/exurb/rural area, perhaps this is not a problem). Or teen’s friends saying, “You have such a big car, we’ll take YOUR car and make YOU the driver for all of our group activities!” ::groan::
Wish I could keep a car longer than a year
Everything I get bored and sell
my brother daily drives it now, irl I didn’t have a car (except national exec elite) from 2017-2021 when I hacked my first lease and the rest is as they say…
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Fair point; I was thinking driver safety :-). I’m not suggesting a G or GLS; a GLE with the 2.0 is certainly top-tier when it comes to safety and not overly-powerful. However, even a GLS, barring the V8 engines, will come across much better to a jury than a Porsche of any displacement if daughter causes a serious wreck.
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I don’t hate the idea but she has to “earn” that car. And by that I mean she should take drivers ed class along with a teenage driving class. A lot of local car clubs, like BMW and Porsche, have them for new and teen drivers to learn defensive driving techniques. There are also winter ones on frozen lakes for snow/ice driving. She has to pay any tickets and any not at fault accidents.
That is basically what my parents did and my friend’s parents as well. I had a Infiniti G35x and my two friends (brothers) had Audis (A4 and Q5). Not 911 level, but fast enough for new/teen drivers to get in trouble. Part of getting those cars was being responsible for them apart from insurance and maintenance.
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Even a 7-figure umbrella is peanuts compared to an 8-figure judgement.
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I am nuts but not 911 nuts. I bought my kid a new base Macan. 4 Cylinder. It probably was the wrong thing to do, but I like cars.
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I’ve never heard of someone with an 8 fig umbrella, would think it’s cost inefficient for pretty much everyone.
Another interesting concept is are they more likely to hit someone driving a big boat. So they may be safer but you have more risk if they are driving a gigantic SUV where they can’t see little stuff below them.
There has to be a balance. Yes mass makes you safer but this paradigm of everyone wanting escalades and gigantic cars so they are safe when they play bumper cars should not be incentivized.
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If everything you own is under a separate LLC’s, do you still need an umbrella policy?
Now you all are scaring the bezeezus out of me, lol
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If the business’s assets are co-mingled with the personal assets, then they can go after personal’s assets as well. If a vehicle is owned by a business, then it must be used for the business purpose, plus buy the commercial auto policy as well. Commercial auto policy is 5x more expensive than personal auto policy.
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I think the question was more so laid out as: if I have nothing for them to take from me with an 8 figure judgment, am I okay?
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