First Car

Hey All,

I am a 17 year old huge car nerd who is getting my license and looking for a first car. I figured I'd ask you guys for advice as you'd provide a good mix of cool and practical. 

I love lightweight manual red cars. If it were up to me I'd be daily driving an X1/9,  MR2, Mg Midget, Miata, or sylva j15. Or a tube framed Carbon bodied busa V8 or V10 engine special. Or an Elise. All manual of course

Unfortunately. My wallet, practicality, and my parents take precedence.

The compromise we've made is 90s or newer for more modern safety features and design, and unfortunately they've unilaterally decided no rwd. AWD is ok though.

Meanwhile I want: lightweight, manual, 2 doors (or three door hatch), fun and engaging to drive, and cool factor. My budget is sub 5k

So far I'm considering a gc8 Impreza coupe, a Subaru xt6, or an Audi TT. I dream of an Isuzu impulse Rd with the lotus tuned handling, 2500lb curb weight, and AWD but they are impossible to find.  These are the lightest manual 4wd cars I can think of in that range. Is there anything else out there? In terms of fwd I'm not a fan but I've considered the Yaris, mk5 golf, and fiat 500.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to participating in this forum!

Edit: if anyone has a terrible condition impulse Rs or gc8 coupe they want to get rid of...............

DSM?  Honestly wouldn't get one for my teen due to maintaining it.

I had (still have the car) a DSM for my first car, I learned more about wrenching than driving with it but it was a great platform to learn on.  They are getting very hard to find now, along with parts.

A non turbo subaru with a manual trans might be a good fit.  Cars are easier to find, parts are more available, won't be wrenching (as much), and plenty of power for your first car.  Anything you learn wrenching on it can be applied to a higher power turbo subie in the future, they're essentially the automotive equivalent of legos.

EDIT: I'll echo the comment about 90's AWD cars being a tough find.  A 1992 car is 30 years old now, and safety tech for any 90s vehicle is questionable.

A lot of those are maintenance nightmares at that age. It's possible to find a good one but sub 5K is a hard prospect. I know FWD isn't the dream but for a first car, provided you don't live in the rust belt, look at the mazda compacts. Protege, Mazda 2, and Mazda 3. Now if you live in the land of rust, forget that suggestion as they are probably all rusted away. 

Craigslist and FB both allow you to search by manual transmission only. But, be sure to verify by pictures as well. 

From that daily shopping in your price range, I would then jump on whatever becomes reasonably available.  This is a tough used car market right now. Less of choosing what you want and more choosing from what's available. 

You can use autotempest to search CL and FB quickly, enter in manual trans, price and keep watching it for the car you might want.  Maybe you can also setup alerts on it?

https://www.autotempest.com/

GCs are getting tough to find, so you'll probably be looking at a GD Impreza. That's okay, they are good cars. It's gonna have 4 doors, and that's okay too.

For extra cool factor, find a Saab 9-2X.

If you can find a clean unmolested Imprezza 2.5RS that's a good pick. We bought one a few years ago for $5700.

We've also had a Protege 2.0 which is a fun car as well.

To be honest for a teenager on a budget almost any reliable car with a manual will do. Unless you have background in Karting you're going to be making mistakes behind the wheel and it's best not to have something with loads of performance.

obsolete said:

GCs are getting tough to find, so you'll probably be looking at a GD Impreza. That's okay, they are good cars. It's gonna have 4 doors, and that's okay too.

For extra cool factor, find a Saab 9-2X.

Saabaru would be an amazing first car, it came with the STi steering rack and some NVH improvements.  Very hard to find a turbo 2006 model with the 2.5, easier to find a 2005 with the 2.0L, and even easier to find a non-turbo.

In reply to Evanuel9 :

Manual trans cars are slower to sell than auto trans cars.  The reason is so few people know how to drive a manual any more.  And so few manual trans car are out there too.  

Also slower to sell as two doors cars.  Anyone who needs to cart around kids in car seats rightfully rejects the idea of a two door.

So, the slowest selling cars are two door manual trans cars that are not "sporty."  Sure, in a Miata the manual is more desirable than the auto but in less sporty cars its the other way around.  A great target for you for a first car could be a 2007 Ford Focus 2dr hatch.  Fun to drive but the whole world does not see it as "sporty".  Slow to sell and therefore typically cheap when they do sell.  Reasonably reliable and easy to source parts and fix if it is not reliable.  

EG civic hatch and learn to wrench by converting to awd.

Do not get an audi tt. It's a beetle with more expensive parts.

Bobzilla may be along in a while to suggest this, but I'll preempt him.  You can probably get a halfway decent manual Hyundai Accent or Elantra for that price, and have money left over to put into suspension work.   Seems like I see 2000s Accent hatches with manuals go pretty cheap, even nowadays.

Wildcard: suzuki SX4 manual. AWD and hatchback and less subaru tax.

Im going to say neon. Fits the bill and should be fun. 

Protege5 would as well, but four door. Great car though. 

The 02-04 protege sedan with the 2.0 was a riot as well. 

Focus zx3 or svt from the early 2000s

Your FWD choices are not great.  What about a Sentra SER?  Not super lightweight, but not really heavy either.  They come with a torsen and are competent at many forms of motorsports.

Also, 2 door long-door cars are evil.  You may learn the error of your ways :)

If it were for my 17yo enthusiast on a budget, I personally would be looking for something that is NOT particularly 'special', but perhaps a bit customizable. Manual trans is fine as a requirement, but reasonably reliable and cheap/easy to maintain, repair, and replace takes precedence over desirability on something that is inherently just going to be abused anyway. At this point in history, I'd also be looking as new as reasonable. Ideally a platform that was not released until Y2k or later, with ABS and dual (minimum) airbags required. Decent aftermarket support could easily be a secondary requirement. If you live somewhere that requires substantial driving on snow/ice, AWD can be nice (but certainly not required) even on sub-200hp cars. But FWD with good tires can be sufficiently capable in snow/ice, especially on the flat-lands, and quite fun to slide around with the assist from a hand-brake. If snow/ice is infrequent at most there is little to no benefit from the extra weight and inefficiency of AWD when sub-200hp.

Honestly, as a young enthusiast, this is a situation where you'll be better served by 'driving a slow car fast' than a 'driving a fast car slow'.

For manual trans cars meeting these requirements on my local Craigslist, I'm mostly seeing Mazda 3 and Ford Focus, with the occasional Honda Civic, and Scion TC. Mazda 2 would probably be one of the best choices for a more modern FWD driving equivalent to an early Miata, but I'm not seeing many... Might be worth holding out for though, especially if you can find one in that sweet bright green color they offered.

They're getting harder to find for your budget, but 8th Gen Civic Si's are great cars.  I've had one and my 20-year-old son has one.

I have a 2010 Toyota Yaris 3-door hatchback with a 5-speed that I love. It's surprisingly fun to drive, is dead-nuts reliable, very practical, and gets great fuel economy. The 4x100 bolt pattern leaves it with a bunch of wheel options, Corolla front brakes are a bolt on for bigger brakes, TRD makes a rear sway bar and lowering springs for it, there are a fair amount of exhausts and cold-air intakes and other parts. For the same mileage, they typically go for $2-3k less than an equivalent Honda Fit. I've autocrossed it and did a track day with it and it didn't embarrass itself and was a lot of fun.

Can't reply to everyone individually so I'm replying here. Seems like the consensus is most manual cheap reliable economy cars will be pretty good for me. Something with strong aftermarket. I do live in the land of rust and snow (Chicagoland area) so that is a consideration. I'm not saying I need AWD for the snow though, but rather the fact that it's not fwd but parents will still allow it. However it looks like fwd isn't the enthusiast deal break I may have thought. 

My first priority, after my sprints requirements is lightweight simply because I love light cars. I'm a big Chapman adherent and having driven a Miata and a Yaris and compared to my mom's SUV and my dad's sedan well, they're much more engaging. However, my expectations have been lowered. I used to have 1000kg as my upper limit which is crazy so I'm compromising and wanting sub 3k pounds. But I will admit there's lots out there that I don't know about and I'll go over I just want great driving dynamics. Even though I'm no pro and not a Karter or everything, I love the lightweight nimble tossable feeling. 

Thanks for all the suggestions as well. I'll take a look at a lot of them today. 

I'd take fwd over awd for an enthusiast car.

I have had a GC8 it was fantastic, did not do well against a Chevy Astro. Good luck finding a rust free one though. $6k but many years ago.

I have had 2 Mk1 TTs, both were great. One was a 1.8T 5spd the other was a 3.2 DSG. $5k each but you pay the ring tax for repairs and they do break.

I concur with the Honda comment and converting it to AWD. Reliable and after the car is AWDed really cool. Check out some Boostedboiz on YouTube they just converted their civic hatch.

A civic hatch AWD conversion actually sounds way cool. I am a huge gear head and love the building process so that's a serious contender. You guys are also opening my eyes to cool fwd cars as I had sort of discounted them.

I actually found a gc8. It's rusty and has some leaks (he says head gasket but says it's an oil leak which makes me think valve cover) and a tranny issue but it might be a cool first bester car because chances are I'll have an accident. The focus also seems cool a zx3 or svt would be awesome. The accent actually has cool styling but only 92hp. Saabaru seems cool and I do love Saabs, but seems a bit heavier than the other options. The civic si seems like the coolest of the bunch for fwd but I wonder about finding one in the price. Which generation of the SE-r do you recommend?

Edit: 8th gen SI is heavy....

In reply to Stampie :

Really? How come?

In reply to NickD :

I love the Yaris. It's my guilty pleasure car. Nothing enthusiast about it but it's cute and lightweight small and easy on consumables. And so tossable

In reply to Driven5 :

The whole slow car fast mentality is why I love small light cars. Low power but low weight and you can drive closer to the limit without breaking laws. And they are just so dynamic. The Mazda2 seems like actually a ton of fun.

The AWD thing isn't really about snow/safety. Snow tires and fwd are just as capable on snow. It's more the enthusiast/driving dynamics and stuff like that. Though it seems the consensus here is fwd is just as fun.

Abs and airbags are also a priority. Do most 90s vehicles lack it?