I'm 22.. I've had a ton of cars. I really suggest a truck as a first car. They take more of a beating, and are built with stronger parts. They are generally made to take abuse. My first car was an 86 mustang 5.0.. It was my moms before she died, had about 60k miles but was rusted pretty bad. Cheap parts, but it barely ever broke down. Then I finally sold it because the drivers side door basically rotted away at the hindge and was too lazy to get it fixed.. It would have been really expensive though. Then I got an 89 isuzu trooper that I couldn't destroy for the life of me. After that was a 93 bmw 825, but that sucked.. Thing kept breaking down. Had a volvo 740 turbo for a little bit, something else but i forget what, then I bought my 96 bronco that will probably outlive me, I've had that for 3 years now, its at 200k miles and hasn't had any major work done and has never broken down on me, then I was stupid and bought the svx (demon seed), put way too much money into it and was left with nothing but a ton of bills and warranty booklets. So I sold it for way more than it was worth to a friend who was stupid enough to buy it, knowing all the problems I had with it... and now it sits in his driveway on its 4th tranny (that I know about, but probably had another one or 2 along the way). After dropping it off at the tranny shop after the last rebuild I had, I got a 97 grand cherokee, which has a transmission... Yeah, get a truck. They're cheaper to fix, and probably won't break down as much. Plus if it does, at least you can fit your upper torso under it to at least see whats going on