In this exercise, I will travel back in time and give you my pick of what would have been the ideal first car for a new driver at various points in time. In the real world, there are many variables with this question; driver age, budget, needs, etc.
To standardize things, I'm going with a fairly typical setup; a 16-year-old new driver who just got their license, on a $20,000 (in 2025 dollars) budget, who needs a typical commuter vehicle for school and general transport. I'll give 3 recommendations for each year.
Let's go back to 1985 for our first stop.
Our new driver was born in 1969, and has $6,700 to spend on a new car.
At this time, the NHTSA 35 mph full-frontal crash test has been around for 6 years, so a vehicle that passes this test is a reasonable expectation; we'll say a 20% or lower severe injury risk, or 4 stars or more out of 5 for both occupants. While the star rating system wasn't introduced in 1994, it can be applied to vehicles as early as 1979, when the test itself began. As for comfort and convenience features, basic heating and A/C and an AM/FM radio are requirements. Gotta make sure they're safe while they listen to Huey Lewis.
Unfortunately, airbags are not going to be in our budget, unless one of the rare 1974-1976 GM full size cars with ACRS can be found. Only 10,000 of these were made, so we're going to count them out, but they would be a good option if you're lucky enough to find one in good shape. Reliability on 10-year-old vehicles at this time was not the best. Also keep in mind, "4 star" or "5 star" crash test rating doesn't mean what it does now. This is the mid-1980s, we have to work within the car safety regimen of 40 years ago.
Chevy Celebrity (1982 or newer) - The '82 Celebrity came out at a base price of about $8,800, with popularly-equipped models usually in the $9,500-10,000 range. If the Celebrity had about 40,000 miles - pretty typical for a 3-year-old car of the era - it might have lost 40% of its value. That puts us at about $5,700-6,000, as much as a grand under budget; you might be able to add more options, fewer miles, or step up to an '83. What did you get for your money? An honest, reliable, comfortable midsize sedan with a 5-star crash test rating, and being a bread-and-butter GM product, there's plenty of supply to go around.
Honda Accord (1982 or newer) - The '82 Accord went for $7,823 as a hatchback and $8,669 if you wanted your Accord in sedan format. Since Accords already had a sterling reputation by this time, they depreciated slowly. That being said, $6,000 would probably buy you a hatch, $6,500 a sedan, either of them an '82 with 40,000 miles. Since Honda moved some 200,000 Accords in 1982, it shouldn't be hard to find a good one that will probably still be running until the turn of the millennium. And Honda was starting to get serious about safety around this time, so you get a 5-star crash test rating if something goes wrong.
Nissan Sentra (1982 or newer) - The Sentra was a brilliantly engineered compact with a surprising amount of room, 4-star safety, and great reliability. It also came with an attractive price; a new 1985 Sentra would go for anywhere from $5,694-8,894. The lower-end of that price range came sparsely equipped, so you might still want to go used; even a fully loaded 1983 Sentra, which was the same body style, would probably come in under the $6,700 budget.
The Volvo 240 was often hailed as the gold standard for first cars around this time, but the base price for a 1985 Volvo 240 was $11,625, going up to $14,215 if you wanted 4 doors. Ouch. Even if you wanted a low-end 240, depreciation would have to do some serious work to make it affordable on a $6,700 budget. A 1980 or 1981 with relatively high mileage is probably the newest you're going to get, and if you want any bells and whistles, you're back into the '70s. And while a 1977 Volvo 240 is still every bit as safe as the cars listed above, reliability isn't going to be near as good as something from 1982-1985.
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