New Driver? New Shoes…

You never stop looking after your kids, especially when it comes to keeping them safe on the road.

Any parent will tell you, it doesn’t matter how old, clever or independent your kids become, you never really stop worrying about them. My eldest daughter Amber is 17 now, so the days of me being concerned about sticking fingers in plug sockets, or adding a crayon graffiti masterpiece to the kitchen cabinets are hopefully, long gone…

But she’s now able to drive. And this adds a whole new level of complexity to the parenting process, especially when you’re the one responsible for the family fleet.

Like many 17 year olds, Amber was keen to have a cool first car. Unlike many 17 year olds, she’s lived a motor trade life, including direct access to Manor Park Classics, a classic car auction house that I’m a director of. This opened up a world of perhaps more interesting cars for her to choose from, and like the chip off the old block that she is, she opted for a 2.0 litre Mazda MX-5 NC, or Mk3, for the less nerdy of you out there.

This somewhat sporty, and genuinely fast choice of motor car may come as a surprise to a few of you, but amazingly, the whole enterprise makes more financial – and parental – sense than you might think. The car itself cost just £1800, and when insured through the rather excellent Mazda Owners Club, that bill comes to almost HALF of what the equivalent, feeble-engined Fiesta would have been. You then may worry about how well a 17 year old will cope with all that power for a first car, and the good news is, so far at least, the answer is ‘very well’…

Knowing this day would come, I’ve been taking Amber karting since she was 6, so the basics of car control were already in her mental toolkit, allied to a healthy respect and fear for a car that feels genuinely fast to her. Nothing focuses the mind of a new driver quite like knowing the car they’re in really could bite them if they don’t behave and drive sensibly. That said, the Mazda’s superb chassis is an object lesson in benign handling, and there are four airbags on hand should the worst happen. Chatting to the insurance company, two-seater cars like the Mazda are considered less risky to underwriters as new drivers can only carry one drunk/annoying/distracting mate at any one time. It all makes sense when you think about it.

So we had a great car, which I had fully serviced and MOT’d for a little ‘belts and braces’ reassurance, but we had a potential problem with the tyres the car had come with. Despite passing the test, these brand-name tyres had been flagged as an advisory due to cracking on their edges. This was no fault with the tyres themselves, but simply what happens to tyres that are 8 years old, in this case, and have clearly seen some very ‘spirited’ driving by the previous owners, causing them to get very hot and bothered. But then, if you can’t do ‘sporty’ driving in a sports car, then what can you do it in?

We needed new tyres then, but being an Envoy ambassador, that was never really going to be an issue! Envoy has an enormous warehouse and a bunch of wonderful dealers on hand to help me sort that out. So that just left which size of tyre to choose. Usually, you’d simply go for the same size, speed and load rating that the manufacturer recommends, and these early Mk3 Mazda MX-5s come on 16” wheels. While there are plenty of fine 16” solutions in the Envoy range, I wanted to upgrade a little bit at the same time, so we opted to go up to a 17” wheel, a much more common size these days.

It’s very much worth mentioning at this point, if you are insuring ANY car, but particularly with a new driver, if you start making any deviations from the factory specification, you’ll need to check in with your insurer. That said, if you’re swapping to an upgrade that the factory saw fit to do themselves, like the 17” wheels, in this case, it’s usually nothing more than a formality. Always best to have these things in writing, though – and always more sensible to have an agreement before any possible future claim.

With that sorted, I called my old mate Warren at Revolution Wheels, who make a rather lovely, lightweight wheel called the CR10. Lighter wheels make a lot of sense on any car, but particularly on something sportier like the Mazda, where their reduced mass means that acceleration, braking and handling all feel a little more spritely and alive. Based in North Notts, I popped up to see him for a chat, and before he and I had finished our tea, his team had rustled up a beautiful set of satin black numbers for Amber’s Mazda.

And that just left the tyres. Thankfully, here, the choice was equally simple; the Motiva UHP! As those last three letters denote, this is an Ultra-high performance tyre, designed for those that like to get the very best out of their cars. And while Amber’s very much about keeping within the speed limit, she does like to get there as quickly as the law allows, and as for cornering, all those years of karting practice and the pointy MX-5 beneath her means she also enjoys a brisk dash down a winding ‘B’ road when the opportunity arises.

Better still, as a concerned Dad, the fun doesn’t need to stop when the rain comes down. Short wheelbase, reasonably fast cars like the Mazda can be a little bit of a handful on a greasy road, but the Motiva goes straight to the top of the class with an ‘A’ wet weather rating, meaning that there literally isn’t a better tyre we can put on the car. Very reassuring when I know she’s out there enjoying herself in damp conditions. Exactly what the car was bought for.

Incidentally, it’s also whisper quiet, too, enjoying a similarly impressive ‘A’ rating for road noise, but then, as she spends 99% of her time driving around with the roof down, playing unfeasibly loud R&B music, that’s probably not going to matter quite as much on her daily drives.

If you too have a new driver in the family, making sure they’re on a good set of tyres, especially those that work well in the rain, is a huge weight off your mind, and with the Envoy range delivering premium brand performance at a very welcome mid-price point, it doesn’t have to break the budget, either! Helping your kids to drive more safely is always money VERY well spent.