That's a little steep, but you gotta grade mileage on a curve -- if it's reasonably maintained, it'll keep trucking for a lot longer than that, it should be plenty for a starter car. I mean, I'm biased, since I drive a (very well maintained when I bought it, high mileage) 2007 Prius that I bought for ~7.5k...8, 9 years ago? and I'm still getting ~40mpg and it survived some pretty questionable maintenance and care on my part.

10 grand feels steep, but for a solid car that'll easily last another ten years with minimal maintenance, good fuel economy, I don't know that you can do much better these days, and it doesn't feel unreasonable.

> I don't know that you can do much better these days, and it doesn't feel unreasonable

It's pretty unreasonable as a class of "starter car" though

I can't imagine many teens working a min wage job for a summer and having a car afterwards if they cost like this

Oh, sure, I was thinking of a car relatively comfortable parents could get a kid without overspending or spoiling too much, it's not super in reach for a kid working part time.

Even expecting parents to buy the car for their kid is kinda weird to me really

I had to get my own job and save to buy my own first car. It was 2k

If it had been 10k it would have taken forever to afford on part time minimum wage

My parents definitely did not have a spare 10k laying around to buy me a car. And if a family has more than one child, then what?

Sure, totally. I was perhaps assuming a certain level of affluence from a HN commenter discussing buying a car for their daughter, but it's true that I described a heavily used premium economy car rather than the complete "at-least-it-starts" clunker that represents the actual bottom of the market.