Eight slightly more alternative cars for new drivers

If you’ve read any standard motoring advice articles, with their ‘practicality’ and ‘safety’ and ‘legitimate guidance’, you’ll know that the suggested cars for new drivers are usually small, generally front-wheel-drive and invariably with an engine so miniscule and paltry that, should you floor the throttle, it will sound like a hive of bees and make your car pour forth at the speed of honey.

What all these sensible advice articles overlook is just how demoralising so-called ‘first cars’ are. Even in modern first cars, you’ll find expanses of cheap plastic, a relative absence of refinement or features and performance that makes you wonder if that’s really the right word to use to describe the situation.

So we’ve decided to impart some troublingly flimsy but overwhelmingly good-intentioned advice on the first cars we’d buy if this were our first time taking the plunge. Because dipping toes is for wusses.

They say: Volkswagen Up. We say: Audi RS4 Avant 4.2 V8

Fact: a lot of new drivers are also young drivers. Fact two: young people tend to have friends from school or slam poetry night or competitive spelunking or whatever it is that young people actually like to do these days. And so asking their entire friend group to pile into a Volkswagen Up is just a recipe for disaster.

Why not spare everyone’s blushes with something a little bit bigger? Audi’s 4.2-litre V8 and quattro AWD should do the trick nicely.

By this point, you may be asking, ‘but won’t it be ruinously expensive to insure, service and fill up with petrol?’ And yes, it absolutely will. These things use many expensive parts that come from Audi in Germany. And neither the former nor the latter are exactly famous for deep discounts. And this is exactly the point! Keep your child safe in the best way possible – by keeping them far too poor to do dangerous things.

Hell, if you do it right, they’ll be too poor to ever take the car anywhere at all! And you can’t get much safer than that.

They say: buy as modern as you can afford. We say: embrace the joy of modern *classic* cars

Nearly every advice article we’ve read extols the virtues of modern, up-to-the-minute cars, bolstered with more computing technology than it took to put a small American flag on the moon. And this is about as wrong as it gets for a new driver.

You remember how people used to talk about being present in situations? The best, most genuine and most genuinely heartfelt advice we can impart to new drivers is to make the experience as involving as possible. And an easy shortcut to that is to buy something classic. While any car older than 15 years can technically be a classic, it’s up to the discretion of the insurer as to whether it’s enough to qualify for classic insurance. So don’t try to fudge it with just any old car. Do yourself a series of favours and find an actual classic car.

There’s still a smattering of modern classics available within the budget and classic aspirations of new drivers. Our pick? Probably a cheap 996 Carrera and spending the rest of the budget on track days.

They say: Renault Clio. We say: 1960s Cadillac Calais

Not a lot of advice articles that we’ve read ever seem to choose a gigantic American luxo-barge as a good fit for a new driver for some reason. And this strikes us as more than a little mean-spirited.

We say be bold! Be fearless! Drive a leviathan that quakes the ground and breaks up the pavement!

On another note, you’ll be happy to note that the Cadillac Calais was the also-ran, entry-level Caddy, so it’s nowhere near as expensive as its famous De Ville older brother. Our smooth-cruising new driver will still look every bit like a set piece in a Scorcese film, for comparative pennies.

Image: RM Sotheby's

They say: Volkswagen Jetta. We say: live a little

The Volkswagen Jetta. It’s fine, and does an OK job of what it’s supposed to do, but if you really think about it, it’s about as entertaining, individual and meaningful as a superhero movie sequel. Luckily, if you need a saloon, life doesn’t have to be as bland and predictable as Captain Wow’s latest crusade against the CGI bad guys. Case in point: the Honda Accord Type R.

You heard us – ‘interesting’ and ‘Honda Accord’ in the same part of the Venn diagram. At least, when you add a high-revving 2.2-litre VTEC engine and one of the most wonderful manual gearbox ever fitted to a saloon.

It’s a proper JDM car too, which will grant you cred in the right circles, should you be in need of said credibility with a group of people who would be complete strangers if not for buying the same type of automobile. The world is a funny place.

They say: Fiat 500. We say: Aston Martin!

Fact: the original Fiat 500 was rear-wheel drive. This is a very important detail that went by the by with the modern iteration, because rear-wheel drive is the quickest shortcut to entertainment.

In the past, the car we would have recommended at this point was something cheap, reliable, rear-drive and fun like a Datsun 240Z. But now you see the obvious flaw in this plan. Because anything old and vaguely attractive is now worth more than Fort Knox itself, let alone the gold it contains. A 40-year-old Datsun now has asking prices that better suit Aston Martins.

So... just get an Aston Martin. Like a V8 Vantage.

They say: Kia Picanto. We say: Ferrari-engined classic

The Kia Picanto is a cheap, reliable city car with a long warranty. But before a new driver buys one, they should ask themselves the following questions:

Is your intended purchase from one of the most storied manufacturers in the business? Was it styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro? Does it have adjustable dampers? How about a Ferrari V8 under the bonnet? Yeah, didn’t think so. The Lancia Thema 8.32 on the other hand, very much yes.

OK, sure, the Thema 8.32 is the most nose-heavy thing since Pinocchio, but what price can you put on having a genuine Ferrari engine under the bonnet of your four-door saloon? None of this ‘Ferrari technology’ or ‘Ferrari-derived’ nonsense from things like the Maserati Quattroporte or Alfa Giulia QV; this is the real deal, released to a presumably bemused public way back in the 1980s. 

They say: Ford Fiesta. We say: an old race car

Yes, for the cost of what is admittedly a very good small car, you can have something that has Formula in its name! OK, so you can technically get much the same effect with a £20 tin of Aptamil, but we guarantee that our way makes for a much more entertaining drive.

OK, so there are one or two teething issues with our plan. The biggest, we think, is that open-wheeled race cars aren’t allowed into just any track day, which might force our new driver to go and get a race licence and attend test days, or actual races, instead. But this, in a certain mildly logical way, is even better, as our new driver will be trained and tested in the art of high-performance car control.

There is a risk, however, that as a qualified race driver, that all they’ll talk about for the rest of their lives is tyre degradation and slip angles. You were warned.

They say: Toyota Corolla. We say: a mid-Nineties MPV

No, we haven’t just sustained a severe blow to the occipital, but thank you for asking. This is a good idea, as we shall now demonstrate.

The Toyota Corolla is perfectly commodious, for a hatchback. But it’s not seven (and sometimes eight) seats’ worth of commodiousness. Nor is it mid-engined, with a supercharger and all-wheel-drive. And again, seating for seven/eight. Yes, you’ll have to hunt for one in that exact spec, but you can get a rear-drive manual version with a supercharger too. The Previa is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Also, we’re just going to put this out there: it’s the modern-day Volkswagen T2 Kombi. It’s cheap, like the Kombi used to be. It’s entirely distinctive to look at, too, and captures the zeitgeist of its generation with the same ease as the Kombi. The VW breathes 1960s; the Previa screams 1990s.