'88 Hyundai Excel.
Cost: 800 bucks.
My first 6 months of insurance: 800 bucks.
Kinda lame if you ask me.
But I can say that I've paid my own insurance & bought all my own cars from day one myself.
Try asking a lot of HS kids these days that question, & I doubt you'll find any who bought & insured their first car (or all of them) without any assistance.
Anywho... I'm not bitter about that one.. no... not at all.
Moving on, there really isn't much to say about it when I had it. It was ok. The coolest thing on it was the Euro style hood that had the hinge in the front of the car over the bumper.
It looked kinda cool-ish on those rare occasions I had to open it.
I blew that car up though.
Shot one of the spark plugs into the piston, which led to oil backfeeding through the air cleaner (don't ask me how) & as I drove into a gas station to find out what that funny smell was (re: burning plastic) I popped the hood & it was on fire. HA! Oops. Good thing it was winter, so I grabbed a handful of snow & threw it on the fire & put it out.
(And, yes, I know water is bad for an oil fire, but it put the darn thing out because it was a huge amount of snow! HA! Oh wells.)
Anyways, I drove it home on 3 cylinders, parked it, tried to sell it unsuccessfully, agreed to let it go to the junkyard, then drove my dad's '78 or '79 Chevy pickup truck for about 6 months to get around, & finally bought my 2nd car, my awesome-ish Dodge Neon. Search here, & you'll find pics of that.