Your first car will probably be somebody’s old car. Someone kept it running long enough for you to get it.

A car that reaches you at seventeen is evidence of somebody else’s maintenance. Oil changed on time, a belt replaced at the right mileage, a strange noise investigated rather than ignored, for a decade before the keys came to you. That is why it still runs. Cheap and old is not the same as uncared for, and in this case it is the opposite.

Learn to look after it: fluids, tires, the noise you are tempted to ignore. If you know who had it before you, tell them it is still going.