HAND ME DOWN CARS

Joe Duarte - May 20th, 2011

When I went off to university, my dad gave me his car. The intent was to insure I didn’t have the excuse to stay away from home for months on end, but perhaps he wasn’t totally uninfluenced by the fact it was a Ford Pinto.

He ended up purchasing a used Renault 5 and when the Pinto died a painful raucous death on the highway between my home and my girlfriend’s place, my dad gave me that car too. Before he handed over the keys and I drove off to college, I had already put in an aftermarket cassette deck and run a couple pinstripes from front cornering lamp to rear taillight, though I didn’t do it to give my dad a hint he should give me the car.

Some things don’t change and today’s driving-age kids also benefit from borrowing the car, though things seem different than they did 30 years ago.

KEVIN GROULX QMI Agency

I may be generalizing, but I find today’s kids seem to have ulterior motives behind their actions. I know of a couple who have found good paying jobs and are using their means to personalize the family vehicle so they’re less embarrassed to drive their friends around. Sometimes it’s something innocuous like metal-plated pedals or custom steering wheels; other times it’s more in your face, like a heart-pounding bass-speaker set boosted by a powerful new amp or mag wheels and performance tires.

A friend of my son’s used to borrow his mom’s minivan on a regular basis and he went about adding components and changing things with the hope that eventually his mom would just come to the conclusion it was more his van than hers, so he should take possession of it. The way he figured it, when mom gave him the van he would have to put in an aftermarket sound system anyway, and the van would look really cool with clear taillight bezels covering coloured bulbs. So, he may as well make the changes he liked and maybe speed up the process a bit.

Every generation has their differences and I think parents by and large are willing to let their youngsters experiment with the family vehicle within reason – a satellite radio receiver here, heated seat covers there – although some of today’s systems also allow parents to restrict how their kids use the vehicle when they have possession of it (with restricted sound system volumes or speed governors).

And honestly, I think it’s a great way to insure youngsters respect the family’s property (they’re more likely to take care of something into which they have sunk some cash).

As it turned out, my son’s friend’s mom liked her son’s improvements to her van so much that she eventually restricted its availability to him and he ended up buying a pickup truck for himself … on which he’s still experimenting.