4uall likes the pictures. I'm more of a words guy, mainly because I can't find all the stuff he does on the interwebs. He must be on the dark web using TOR to get images so fast.
MY SAGE ADVICE TO A TEENAGED FIAT SPIDER OWNER
I'll offer my
very long-winded advice as someone who has been mucking around in autos for 30+ years, including having raced them, and also having made my share of trouble with cars as a teenager (thankfully not ever having hurt anyone!). As a high school epistemology teacher, I happen to know more than a thing or two about teenage behaviour (I’ve taught well over a thousand teens in under a decade) as well as how the brain works and learns. Finally, I have years of experience riding a vintage motorbike as a daily commuter so I have thought an awful lot about road safety on an almost daily basis. Settle back for a long read if you can pay attention; if you can’t focus for that long, then don’t even THINK of owing a Spider.
Here’s my view: Don't use the Fiat as a daily driver—at least not yet. Use it as an occasional pleasure vehicle and drive the Civic daily until its wheels fall off. While you’re abusing the Honda during the week, take out the Spider for a drive on the weekend with your dad. Work on it. Get to know it. Work on it some more. Take it out for a short cruise on a quiet road during a summer night to woo a girlfriend. Figure out its problem areas and address them methodically, one by one. Take your mum out once in a while and make her fall in love with the car and then learn to trust you with it. The Fiat will almost certainly break down and leave you stranded at some point (that's part of the "fun" of Spider ownership and how old stuff works, but make sure this doesn’t happen when with your mum or your cause will be lost forever). When it does break down, learn how to fix the car quickly on the spot or know how to get it towed without damaging the car or your wallet to a place where you can fix it later. If with a girlfriend, the former will really impress her; the latter really won’t since now you can’t drive her home. In later years, if she ever becomes your wife, the former will (sadly) rapidly cease to impress her despite your own growing sense of accomplishment; the latter, meanwhile, becomes grounds for divorce after it happens enough times …
In all seriousness, before you use a Spider as a daily driver, get AT LEAST a couple of more years of daily seat time in another car—one that has airbags, ABS, a built in safety cage (i.e. a roof supported by B and C pillars), back seats that are safe for your friends, real crumple zones, etc. Go fast in it. Go slow in it. Fool around with it. Get to know the rules of the road and how a car behaves in different conditions (wet, night, cold, snow if you get it). Get a flat and learn how to fix it roadside by yourself without calling anyone. Just as importantly, get to know how OTHER drivers behave and who/what you need to look out for (erratic lane switchers, tailgaters, clueless texters, soccer moms, aggressive dads) plus how to deal with stuff like dangerous intersections, road paint when it's wet out, off camber corners, cars pulling out unexpectedly from the curb, etc. I know you’ve been driving for almost a year so you’re no stranger to the road, but you’re hardly that well acquainted with it either. Drive more as “‘Tis not a year or two shows us a man.” Shakespeare wrote it, so it must be true! It means you don't know jack about anybody until you've been with them a couple of years. You're only halfway there...
Frankly, the road is a different place today than it was 30-40 years ago or more when a lot of us on this bulletin board started driving. There are way more vehicles on the road than even a few decades ago. Worse yet, there are way more SUVs/trucks/mini-vans than ever before, and they have serious mass. There's no contest: They badly squish old Fiats and, unfortunately, can even ride up and into the passenger compartment because of seriously mismatched bumper heights and wildly different centres of gravity. Here's a pic from my workplace parking lot to illustrate the point:
It doesn't matter how safely I drive or how well I’m buckled in, if the driver of a truck that size collides with me at any appreciable speed, then it's probably lights out for me and not a scratch on him. It would drive right over the back of the car for sure, and just plain
through a driver or passenger door. It doesn't matter who's at fault or obeying the law, it's only the laws of physics that count at that point. The best I can do is drive very defensively and make smart choices, because the car itself has next to no defences compared to a modern vehicle.
To make matters worse, people generally drive faster than they used to (in part because their cars are safer and more comfortable) and also brake later (better brakes and tire technology); they probably know less about car control and have less situational awareness than in the past because now there are so many automated systems: ABS, traction control, dynamic stability control, backup sensors with rear facing cameras, automatically adjusting mirrors for headlight glare, blind spot warnings, moving out of lane warnings, automatic emergency braking if a collision is imminent, plus power or adjustable everything so you can’t ever actually get a direct feel for what the car is doing (steering, brakes, suspension) because it’s all mediated through pumps and electronics. For the most part that’s all well and good—except for when it’s not as people over-drive the limits of their vehicle because of a false sense of security. You see it all the time in single car accidents. I live where there’s snow on the roads for four months of the year—people drive way too fast because they get used to their ABS bailing them out, or their traction or stability control keeping them straight… until they’re just going too fast for the conditions and no system can help you when you try to take a curve and the coefficient of friction is too low.
To boot, people probably have less respect for the rules of the road than they used to (the self-centred ‘I'm more important than everyone else’ phenomenon that leads to justifications like "Even though it says no left turn, I'm making a left anyway because I'm in a rush.") Or maybe the ratio of rule-followers and breakers has remained the same, but overall there are more drivers so the absolute number of rule-breakers is greater than before. There are certainly more accidents than ever before (likewise a function of there being more people and vehicles) though injuries are likely lower because of increased safety measures. Most of those measures aren’t present in the Spider.
Add to the above the fact that people behind the wheel are MUCH more distracted than ever before by texting, phoning, music searching, sat-naving, picture taking, not to mention Facebooking and Tweeting. I'm not kidding. People actually do that when driving. Maybe not your average Spider driver, but that's because they're old and like old stuff, which includes cars that don't have Bluetooth built in, not to mention ultra-fancy computerized wizardry like electronic fuel injection.
Nowadays, if most people get a buzz on their smartphone, they just can't ignore it and wait to read the text later or see who called only after they’ve stopped driving. Delaying gratification isn't easy in the age of having the internet in your pocket: People feel disconnected if they're not online 24/7 and looking at screens non-stop. That honestly makes for a dangerous driving environment that some police forces say is a much greater safety concern than drinking and driving. I know that drivers Facebook and Tweet on the road—my students tell me about it.
Finally (if you've actually read this far), you're a teenager (no, not the others, they’ve already fallen asleep from the scotch they had earlier). It's not an insult, just a fact. Not only do you not have that much experience driving yet, but you also don't make the best decisions under pressure or in emotionally elevated situations. It's not your fault, just your brain’s. The brain—and especially the prefrontal cortex which is the rational decision making centre responsible for executive function and judgement—doesn't fully develop until the young twenties, and later in boys than girls; meanwhile, the emotional centres (amygdalæ and extended limbic system) are more fully advanced and need a big stimulus for a reward. It's one reason, amongst others, why teenagers take risks that most adults won't (anymore), and why they make what an adult would call a “bad decision” while actually knowing better in a different context. (
e.g. “Of course I wouldn’t ever get in a car if I knew the driver was drunk!” and then that very night get in a car with a drunk driver…)
To recap: There is NO SUBSTITUTE for experience; you don’t get experience without making at least some mistakes—it’s how we learn. Indeed, we probably learn more through our failures than we do through our successes (they certainly influence us more). You will surely make many mistakes in your first years of driving, and there's no shame in that. I’m sure you’ve already made a few in your first year. You’ll also do dumb things in cars (by adult standards)… hopefully they won’t be too serious. Make more of those mistakes and do more of those dumb things in something that's safe like the (boring) Civic. You’ll have your hands full just with that. Once you’re a bit older, hopefully a bit wiser, and when you’ve learnt from even more experience what to look for in other drivers and the road,
then drive something that's unsafe (and more viscerally exciting) on a daily basis. In the meantime, drive it just once in a while and learn how to maintain it. So: Drive the Civic into the ground, and learn to baby the Spider.
It’s great that your dad is going to work on it with you, and doubly great that it was once his car that is now getting passed to you.
For good measure, keep reinforcing to your dad that no matter how much time he puts in helping you fix it, it's now YOUR car. It doesn’t matter that it was once his; he gave it away, now it’s yours. And also let him know that no matter how cool he thinks he looks to the ladies when he’s driving it, your driving it with girls your own age in it will always look way cooler. He'll love when you keep telling him that!
Here’s more to ponder from Shakespeare on the nature of youth from
A Winter’s Tale (3.3):
I would there were no age between sixteen and
three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the
rest; for there is nothing in the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry,
stealing, fighting--Hark you now! Would any but
these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty
hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my
best sheep[!]
He didn’t know about the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, but he sure knew a lot about human behaviour!!
baltobernie wrote:Statistically, a 16-year-old driver is nine times more likely to have a traffic accident than a middle-age driver. You probably even know of somebody your age who has had his first accident. Probably just a fender-bender, with no personal injury, but that's because modern cars are incredibly safe
(so long as the occupants are restrained).
Such an accident could lull you in to a false sense of security. Even a low-speed crash in an old roadster can have devastating results:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNj1hQFlFkM Your mom is right. Work on the Spider, but save it for a time when you'll both be around to enjoy it.
Oh yeah. What he said.
If nothing else, take the car and work on it with your dad. I learned to work on cars with my father. My dad passed away many years ago, but I will always have fond memories of helping him with the cars. Money can't buy that! Bond with good 'ol dad!
IMHO this opportunity is providing numerous positive life experiences and I would jump at the chance 
Is your mom on this forum? LOL
