Cyrusx7

University of Houston

Agreed.

phonetics

i know some 12 years old owning both phantom and maybach... and my 15 year old cousin has enzo and lp640 and slr... u r not gonna believe a 10year old neighbour owns sl55, sl65, and sl600 all in different colors.. .

mjr24

55's have come down in price.....they are in the upper 40's-low 50's now. When you think about it, it's nothing more than a new Escalade cost-wise these days.

alroumi

I agree and parents are getting there children these rather than an escalade for the fun factor and stlye.

joemoney415

At my college in San Diego back in '02 there was a guy who drove a red 360 spider to school, and he regularly parked it in front of the school of business in the loading zone. He was constantly ticketed but never towed. I layed low on my parents dime driving around mid 30 to mid 40k cars. Now that I am on my own I drive whatever I can pay for. Don't hate on the kids, they wont understand how spoiled they are until they get older. Then, hopefully, they feel stupid about what was important to them back in the days of being a dependent.

aleksandar1099

i drove an clk500 as my first car when i was 15, then a clk 55, and now an e55 and i am not cocky or spoiled about it at all, contrary to some peoples beliefs, i do work hard for them and since my parents can afford it it does not make me a worse person at all. It gives me a goal for the future to want to have more and better cars as my life progresses.....just my .02

Goyard

Why is it OK for people here to buy their unemployed girlfriends/wife/boyfriend/husband SL55s and the like, but it is so criminal to buy your children M6's and SL55s because they didn't "work hard to earn it."?

So what hard work did your unemployed significant others do in life to have high end cars thrown their direction?

SL2003driver

Difference could be that children need to be taught that you need to work for what you get. The wife works hard putting up with you

AMG Child

Very good point Goyard! The only difference in that is that kids are young, so it might ruin their fun if you know what I mean. Imagine the difference of getting a pos for your first car, then getting older you get an AMG or something, it feels much more rewarding. Getting it for say your wife, well she should be at least a little older than college age, so it makes a little difference. Still I can easily see the spoiledness of that too. Cheers

mjr24

Do you really have to ask that question?

When I was 18.....considering the way I drove....and if I had a 55 at the time, I likely would have killed about 10 people driving. That would be in the first month of ownership alone.

Besides that, I think it makes them lazy. When I was in high school (late 90's) the nicer cars were new Camaros, Mustangs, etc. These were kids whose parents owned companies, these just happened to be the "in" cars back then. I see them now and they have similar cars.....they were spoiled back then but I think that hurt them after school because they don't seem to be any better off now car-wise.

I had a POS $1800 1989 Grand Am as my first car.

Sunny55

Do you happen to work for Goyard?

Goyard

Yes, I did. Only for a few months while I was studying abroad in Paris.

Murtaza

Guys who buy SL55's and M6's for their girlfriends are usually at least 24+ I'd say and quite a bit more mature (hopefully) then a teenager. They are adults, the time for lessons having to do with earning money is gone.

Maturity is the factor for me, if you haven't heard an 18 year old kid in Florida killed himself and 4 of his friends in an M5 a few weeks ago.

Having to work for something while you're young establishes a good work ethic. Why would you want to work or do anything significant with your life if everything was handed to you on a gold platter?

Cyrusx7

Wow, that is very sad.. Do you have a link to an article or something?

edit: link very sad..

SL2003driver

Darwinism

RRod

I say let people buy anything they want for their driving age teens if they have the means and some extra children to spare (seel link below):

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/slr/sl...0129_001.shtml

Remembering the way I used to drive at 16, I am amazed that I've made it to Senior Discount status today.

I wrecked my first car at least 3 or 4 times by the time I graduated HS, and then moved away to college with a brand new '64 GTO 389 Tri-Power Coupe with 4:10 gears that was crushed by a runaway cement truck while it was parked on a street in 1967. Man, I thought that GTO was the fastest accelerating thing in the whole world at the time .... but then again, I was just a dumb-*** kid that didn't know anything about the real world beyond my home town and my engineering college campus. Unfortunately there was no internet, cable TV, personal computers, personal music players, or small hand calculators back then ..... no wonder my head always hurt with all that thinking I had to do (like using paper/pencils or slide-rules and listening to music in scratchy vinyl mono)

But I was young, stupid and generally happy ..... thought I would live forever, etc (a standard normal young kid thing).

That all changed however after my first steam catapult launch in a fully armed F-4J Phantom jet off the coast of Vietnam in the very early 70's. Being hurled from 0-175 knots (199 mph) in just a tick under 4 seconds into an uncertain future was always sweaty palms adrenalin rush ..... an experience that unfortunately has left me emotionally disabled in that I've never since achived any true driving fulfillment (like when I was a kid) regardless of all the makes and models of automobiles I've sampled over the last 30+ years while working in the oil patch around the world.

So I say again, let the kids have their thrills now while they are still young enough to enjoy them (assuming of course that we all have kids enough to spare so that losing one or two won't matter that much to us)

Machine

+1. Responsible or not, the temptation to kill myself in a high performance automobile would have been too great. I drove a Mustang GT in college and that car took me to the dark side on many occasions. Someone was looking over me.

WoodHill Motors

I would never buy my kids(not that I have any yet) a 55,63 or any car over 400hp for that matter.

Not until they graduate from college.(which should be around 22y/o or so)
Only then will I truly trust their judgment.

I damn near killed myself in a car with barely 250hp doing dumb s*h*i*t* cause I had no one else in the car watching me.

Its too tempting. Especially when the friends are around.

SL%%

To me its matter of opinion and judgement. It won't take a SL55 or a SL63 nor a 997TT to kill the driver. Even get a 350Z and hell even a Civic Si could kill you. I guess what the others are saying is all about temptation but I agree to those who said that, they should learn to be responsible, independent, knows how to value hard earned money (ey, some people has to go through tough times in order to attain what tehy have now) and especially their own lives. Its easy to give something and yet most, not all but a majority wouldn't know how to value the things that were given to them. Its ok to give, nothing wrong with that but also know when is the appropriate time to give it. That's just me

ZedStyle

if you think you're supposed to 'reward' your kids for doing well in school or being responsible, and your kids expect this, then you might as well buy them what you want, because you've obviously already made a mistake in raising them.
you pay to clothe, feed, and educate them, and teach them right from wrong. if you've brought them up to expect (and get) a new car for getting good grades in high school, or for ANY reason for that matter, good luck.
My kid's first car will be worth whatever money he earns from his summer job before he gets his license, plus double that amount from me. he'll learn to do oil changes, tune-ups, etc., and then i'll help him upgrade from there. no person who has never had a real job deserves a brand new car, no matter how well they did in 11th grade social studies.

ucsdsig

Can't say it any better

jpcdmd

I actually think seeing young kids drive around in exotics and the like LOOKS RIDICULOUS. Yeah when I was in high school I would have given my left nut to drive something like that but now that I'm in my 30's, I now know that I would have just looked like a fool. Everyone assumes its daddy's money and that you're a spoiled rotten little *****. Especially the kids who have them at school. Umm...... you're at school, not running a company or performing brain surgery, so you're not fooling anyone.

Kinda like a 12 year old wearing an outfit that looks like Dr Troy from Nip Tuck instead of a t-shirt and skater shorts. Just doesn't look appropriate.

IngenereAMG

I never said that I was upset about not getting stuff. It helped me to learn how to set goals, follow through and be successful.

ItalianStallion

On occassion, I would drive my dad's SL55 when I was 16 years old. No problems, just felt baller lol. He leased me a CLK500. Once the payments were up, I had to get my own car. That was his deal, he'd lease me a car till I'm 20 and by then, I should be enough of an adult to pay for my own car. If not, I'm a failure and have to drive a bicycle.

I actually broke the lease early because I bought a new car and couldn't wait. I love paying for my own things; makes me feel more responsible and more deserving I guess.

And also, keep in mind over the 3 years I had the CLK, I put in over $20k worth of mods...enough that I could have leased the car myself. By having my dad get me a nice car as a first car, it motivated me to work hard so that I wouldn't go backwards and get a lesser car (not that car = sucess, but I am a car guy and I could never drive an "average" or even plain "nice" car).

RRod

I'm not sure how leases really work because I've always paid cash for all the cars I've collected over the last 40+ years, so I'm curious how you got the lease company to okay all those modifications?