I think everyone should drive total pieces of shit when they're young. It builds character. My first three cars cost $1850 combined. Not that I don't love driving sweet cars, but there's a je ne sais quoi in being young and not giving a fuck that your mirror could fall off again at any moment.
Bourgeois pig. I bought 3 cars for $350 all in when I was 16. Hell, I got a '72 Ranch Wagon and a '66 Corvair Monza for free for hauling them off; parted out the Ranch Wagon for $500 and sold the Corvair for $600. The first "college car" to replace the fact that the Monster wouldn't drive without a cooling system redesign was a '77 Ford Granada bought at auction for $125. I sold it a month later for $900 in a different city, bought a $350 synthesizer and a '77 Scirocco with a salvage title for $200. It became my all-around off-road beater; I used to flog it up logging roads on weekends. Remember coming around a corner that I didn't know was a corner while I was in mid-air and thinking "I'm going to roll this thing." My next thought was "but I can probably walk to the road from here and I paid $200 for it." Liberating. I didn't actually roll it and spent the rest of my afternoon not pretending to be Colin McRae.
I literally drove one car until it seized up. Why? Because I could. The car was basically $100 and some sweat equity. I had a Plymouth Horizon (replica pictured below) that had holes in the floor that I covered with ply wood. It was referred to as the Flintstone Mobile, because you could see the road below as you drove. It also had no heat and well, this was Michigan. There were times that I would literally hold the car lighter in my hand to keep warm. Also, I would drive for a mile and have to get out and scrape the freezing windows again. It was awful and was essentially a death trap. How my parents ever let me drive that is beyond me. 
bought a '77 skylark for $250 the engine. Ended up fixing it instead. Drove that piece of shit to Ministry in San Diego in back; that vintage Skylark has a water-soluble windshield seal and it snowed the entire 1200 mile journey. Tried to dogleg around some debris and the tires were so bald (and buicks are such shitty handlers) that I spun out and punched out the rear drivers-side door on a parked VW Golf. Golf was fine. Buick was bent. We pulled the door off with a cumalong thinking we'd replace it (I had revolving "have a penny" credit with two local junk yards) only to discover the fucking unibody was bent. So I had a 3-door buick. Drove it that way for another year because money and interest was going elsewhere. It came up in a County Council meeting about the epidemic of "abandoned cars" plaguing my town. A couple people stood up and said "no, the scary kid drives that thing every day."
A couple people stood up and said "no, the scary kid drives that thing every day."
-That is fucking hilarious. The scary kid, -I love it.
The shittiest car I ever drove was a Pontiac Lemans (not the cool muscle car; the shitty 80s garbage bucket of the same name). My guess is you would never let your kids drive cars as terrible as what we drove. I don't blame you. Basic safety seems reasonable. But, hey, we didn't die! And it wasn't for lack of trying.
I think I know what to get you for Christmas this year:
One of my best friends had a Lemans and we loved it. He was a crazy fucking driver. He loved to pass cars on the median and to pass cars on the right that were in the right lane. Crazy guy. He's now a pretty successful actor. We are lucky to be alive.
Among the dumbest things I have ever done in my life is driving like that while riding as dirty as it is possible to ride, and without a license the four of us. We were breaking so many laws I can't even piece together what would have happened to us if we'd been caught.
I was once openly doing lines of cocaine on a barroom table in Honolulu, because... it felt like it should be legal. I mean, it's not really the US. Ah, what a young idiot I was. Now I'm a much older idiot.We were breaking so many laws I can't even piece together what would have happened to us if we'd been caught.
I hear ya.