What car did you learn to drive in? Shocked to see what learners are now driving...

I learnt in a 1.2 Clio initially then the instructor swapped to a 1.4 Clio. I swear there was no difference between the two!

I imagine these days whatever happens to be a good deal per month would play a big part in the car decision.
 
Can't remember what I first had official lessons in when I was 17 but I do know I spent some time driving my mates clio and fiat cinquecento around the school playground that his mums bf was the caretaker of at the weekends. When I finally pulled my finger out and got my licence at the grand age of 29 I learnt in a Citroen C3.
 
unofficially .... a tractor and Renault fuego when I was around 9 or 10.

officially .... a (1st model) rover 216 with my parents, and a ~1991 fiesta with my instructor
 
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I learnt to drive in a Corsa C. My daughter just passed her test in a Peugeot 208 latest model.

You do see a lot learning in automatics now compared to when I learnt to drive.
 
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Unofficial lessons with my dad sat beside me were done in a Mazda 323f (with the pop-up headlights!) and my 306 HDI. My ten official driving lessons and the actual driving test was done in a 206 HDI. I took my test in Monmouth on a normal weekday when everyone was at work, so it was a fairly relaxed test.

Before getting my provisional licence I did a small amount of driving in a field in a very rusty Toyota Hilux farm truck and later a MK3 Golf GTI on surrounding private tarmac tracks - a bonus of living out in the countryside I guess.
 
My only unofficial lesson was in a friend's SWB V8 Land Rover that he bought to do up after getting rid of the Vauxhall Cavalier that he got as his first car. I tried out a long dead-end road on an industrial estate. The torque scared the hell out of me, never having driven anything, so I turned down any of further goes for fear of wrecking it.

I didn't start learning properly until my late 20s and had a false start with an RAC instructor in a Fiesta (guy made me nervous of scuffing the wheels).

After a couple of months pause I signed up to the driving school who were on that series about hopeless learners. The instructor I got was a lovely guy, patient and easy to chat too. He had a Mk2 Clio 1.9td and was a keen believer in safe driving but still having fun with whatever torque/power you had.

I always booked two hours lessons and he would say pick a direction and we would drive an hour that way and then head back a different route. He would maker turn thr car around in stupidly narrow places, hill start in the snow on dark winter evenings and anything else he could think of that provided 'real' driving challenges.

I was still learning when my son was born and diagnosed with a severely disabling condition. He would let me fit my lesson start and finishes around when I needed to get stuff to the hospital or just so I could finish get there after work.

I failed my first test because on the way back to test centre I was asked about what I would be doing after. It took mind of my driving and the tester failed me for undue hesitation waiting to pull out onto a roundabout.

I passed second time a couple of weeks later and two months after my son was born. I got to drive him home about ten months later.

Sorry for the wall of text :D.
 
1998 driving school in Slovakia. Skodas 105, 120 and Felicia. 105/120s were used just in training centre to learn parking etc. Felicias on actual driving lessons and test. Before that we had to do about 10hours of classroom lessons with couple of lessons in old style simulator.
 
Austin Rover Mini Metro its what all the driving schools used back then pretty much. First two cars were metros too both knackered old rust buckets, how things have changed.

First instructor was terrible it was only my first lesson and she spent most of the time shouting at me, she didn't last long had an experienced instructor for the next and the remaining he was great. She was a heck of a looker as I remember but lord was she terrible she was only a trainee I found out later I believe there was some kind of ruckus in the school and she left or something pity in one way but there was no way I would passed the test with her.
 
it's funny.... given drivers are far more likely to have an accident in their 1st 12 months of passing their test, really they need to be in the safest cars possible. .... whilst I didn't have my own car I drove my parents so did have access to nice (for the time) cars, my mates who had their own car didn't half drive some rust bucket death traps. vauxhall nova, very old model fiesta and the worst an old metro. Not the safest car when they were tiptop but these were very tired with worn suspension, dodgy brakes and tyres which whilst presumably legal were the cheapest odds and sods they could get. my mates nova it was a minor miracle him and his 3 passengers all got out alive when he rolled the car and another mate who crashed his metro.. it was like a tin can.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
it's funny.... given drivers are far more likely to have an accident in their 1st 12 months of passing their test, really they need to be in the safest cars possible. .... whilst I didn't have my own car I drove my parents so did have access to nice (for the time) cars, my mates who had their own car didn't half drive some rust bucket death traps. vauxhall nova, very old model fiesta and the worst an old metro. Not the safest car when they were tiptop but these were very tired with worn suspension, dodgy brakes and tyres which whilst presumably legal were the cheapest odds and sods they could get. my mates nova it was a minor miracle him and his 3 passengers all got out alive when he rolled the car and another mate who crashed his metro.. it was like a tin can.
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Yeah I'd definitely want my kids driving something reasonably safe - but you do learn a lot from driving a POS. The Metro I had to learn to drive was a death trap with brakes that I'm surprised passed an MOT - you needed to plan braking a whole week in advance, steering was shoddy, etc.
 
bigmike20vt said:
it's funny.... given drivers are far more likely to have an accident in their 1st 12 months of passing their test, really they need to be in the safest cars possible.
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While I agree safety is the main priority, it really needs to be a good mix of safety for the driver and other road users.

Most older drivers have driven cars that had rattled when above a certain speed.. pop a new driver into a modern suv and the number of safety features may make the driver think that they are invincible. With the torque and pickup speed of some of the higher end ones, specially an automatic, they may be breaking the speed limit before they even know it.

I think this country is slowly getting to the point where it be like the US, where small affordable cars are hardly made available by the manufacturers as they claim that no one buys them.
 
I wonder going forward with EVs there could not be a power limiter which could be enabled until drivers had a certain amount of experience under their belt.
that way you could let your kid drive a safeish car like a new R5...... but with a 0-60 knocked back to 12 or even 15*** seconds and speed limited to 80mph.

*** it's a balancing act. I sometimes felt the acceleration of my pug 1.4 306 was bad enough to be hairy when fully loaded pulling onto a fast road. sometimes a bit of poke can be safer.
 
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