LOL, point made.
However I still suspect the history of this one is well known by the OP.
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Thank you all for the input so far. The main concern is the safety not the mechanicals. I used to own this car starting back in 2003 and most major mechanicals have been serviced at least once. Some of them by me, including valve cover gasket, replacement cat, etc. My Dad had babied it with a timing belt change, new top.
Iām sure my son and I can keep it going mechanically. The question from his mom is the safety of the car.
Yā know, keeping mom feeling comfortable with his safety is as important a reason for withholding the car (until he gets older) as would be any mechanical reason. Iād urge you not to underestimate the importance of momās feelings.
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I think itās okay as a first car if the kid is responsible enough. Thereās better choices though for safety & economy for a first car. The old Miatas are very popular with kids now for customizing. I wouldnāt pay any where near 5k for it though. It will qualify as an antique vehicle in 2 years. Itās going to need a lot of upkeep no matter what condition itās in, so keep that in mind.
My smart-alecky brother owned a small Chrysler company car for many years. It had many miles on it. Then, his son got his diploma in electrical engineering and his internship involved driving a lot of miles, getting paid per the mile.
With that small car, he actually made money on the deal.
When he got enough money to buy himself a real car, my brother sold it to a friend for his son, his first car. HE DESTROYED IT THE FIRST TIME HE TOOK IT FROM THE DRIVEWAY.
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All these tales of destruction may well be true, but the car did not destroy itself, the driver destroyed the car. Old Miatas have the same engine block as old Ford Escorts. They have airbags and all the US safety requirements any other car of that era had to meet. They are not faster than equivalent sedans, they only feel faster. And, size has some relevance, but a bigger car is not necessarily safer. A car that makes a kid feel invulnerable is dangerous, and a car thatās so big itās hard to manage for a new driver is not safe.
All of this means that the question of safety is very hard to answer, because most of it depends on the nature of the young driverās personality.
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To me the question of safety is obvious. The Miata would be one of the least safe cars one could give a new driver. Itās small, so it will do poorly in a crash. The open top makes this worse. And itās a sports car, encouraging fast driving. A bad combination for any new driver.
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The likelihood of a 16 year old driver totaling or severely damaging their first car is EXTREMELY high. A first car should be safe and disposable. I donāt think this car is that safe (see Sir Isaac Newton and the laws of inertia) and Iām not sure you would consider it to be disposable. A high mileage Honda Accord or Toyota Camry, or even a Hyundai Sonata, would be a perfectly safe, boring, and disposable vehicle suitable for young (and new) driver.
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Thinking only of inertia, and big-vs-small, is the wrong approach. There are plenty of tanks from the 50ās which weigh a lot more than a Miata, and if you get into a head-on crash in one vs a Miata, youāre liable to end up stabbed through the heart with a steering column.
Most of us managed to make it through school with 90ās level safety features, or earlier. Iām not worried about the safety aspect - we cannot shroud our children in bubble wrap and eliminate 100% of the risk of living.
Iād frankly rather see parents taking the time to teach more about safe driving than the kids are getting from driverās ed than wring their hands over whether Juniorās car should have 20 airbags or 30.
Iād have thoroughly enjoyed a Miata at that age, and itās OK for kids to enjoy their car. If the history is known, and thereās a repair bill plan (because even if it was, apparently, babied its whole life, itās still older than legal drinking age, and will therefore break more often than a late-model) then go for it.
Spend extra time in the car with the kid making sure heās got practice at safe driving. If you live where thereās snow, take him out to the high school parking lot on Saturday after a snowfall and practice skid recovery, which he will think is fun, and you will know is teaching him to be safe.
And then get him out to autocrosses, where he gets to hoon the car in a safe environment which will not only be fun, but will also ingrain proper at-the-limits handling in him.
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The fact that we survived cars without safety features is meaningless. Dead drivers seldom post hereā¦,
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@shadowfax - Yes and no on your inertia response. In 2006 my ex-wife tested my 2000 Honda Accord against a similar age Suburban, head on. Score - Suburban 1, Accord 0. While the Accord prevented any serious injury to my ex (and the first responders were able to open the front door by the handle), the car was a total loss and my ex was hospitalized for the night. The Suburban had a dented bumper and the driver drove it home from the scene of the crash with no injuries.
Inertia simply dictates that, with the large number of pick-up trucks and SUVās on the road today, a Miata will fare poorly in any energy transferring type of crash. And a 22 year old Miata has vastly different safety features than a more recent compact car. My 19 year old daughter is in a 2016 Mazda3. Not much bigger than a 95 Miata, but worlds apart in terms of safety.
Weight is a major factor for cars of similar age:
http://www.informedforlife.org/viewartcl.php?index=83
The likelihood of an accident is higher for a teen, but accidents are not guaranteed for new drivers, nor is the severity. All of my children were in accidents as teenagers, and none involved injury.
I had an Austin America at college and a friend Han an Austin Healey Sprite. Both of us survived without incident. The Miata is 22 years old and I think that makes it disposable. Anything is possible, of course, and it is a matter of the parentsā comfort level.
As long as weāre doing personal anecdotes, I survived being T-boned by a '95 Explorer while driving an '84 Tercel. Both cars were disabled, and both of us were injured. I was in a car that was much smaller and a decade older, and so by the āinertia is kingā theory I should be dead. Yet Iām posting here. 
The point Iām trying to make is that we cannot make our kids 100% safe unless we put them in army tanks, and then weāre making other drivers who get run over by them because theyāre still bad drivers 100% unsafe. As long as the car is in good repair, then youāll go a lot farther toward the safety goalposts if you make sure the kid is a good, responsible driver than if you go looking for the safest car you can find.
Or in other words, Iām a lot more interested in preventing collisions whereas current traffic safety programs seem to be geared toward ignoring the factors that cause collisions in favor of reducing the injuries when they happen.
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Yup. There have been numerous links on this very forum to crash-test videos between large older cars and small newer cars that have shown that technology has totally wiped out and superseded any advantages that weight has.
I stand by my original post, but wonder if momās comfort with the young man having the Miata shouldnāt supersede the technical questionsā¦ at least until he gets enough experience driving that mom feels comfortable with the idea.
Those MIT guys are pretty smart. And they show that the laws of inertia are alive and well. And these are laws where the penalty is not just a traffic ticket!!!
As far as insurance is concerned, when I got my driverās license in the late 1950s, my dad had Farm Bureau insurance. If I was restricted to driving a pickup truck, the rates wouldnāt go up. I guess it wasnāt cool to drive a pickup. We lived in the country, but I had been transferred to a city high school with a lot of wealthy city slickers. Being the non-conformist that I have always been, I would have relished driving a pickup. However, my dad paid the higher premium and I could drive the family cars. Most of the time, I drove the older of the carsāa 1952 green Dodge coupĆ©. While many of my classmates drove much newer cars and some had sports cars bought for them by their parents, I drove the Dodge coupĆ© which became known as āthe green turtleā. There were enough jokes about the Dodge that it actually became kind of cool. None of my classmates had a green turtle to drive.
One thing my dad did when I got my license was put me in charge of maintaining the cars. My dad did a lot of business with the DeSoto/Plymouth dealer. The chief mechanic was also the service manager. Sometimes when the car developed a problem, this old service manager would yell at me and say āYouāre smart enough to fix that. Donāt come in here and waste our time and your Dadās money on something you should be able to fixā. He would then explain what I needed to do and where to buy the parts. He would then yell āIām going to make a mechanic out of you yet, boyā. When I had to keep up the family cars, it made me respect the driving privilege. I also learned enough to do a.lot of my own repair and maintenance when I was just starting out on my own.
I did have a classmate that had a new MGA. I thought a car like that with its good handling would be fun to own. I guess that would be equivalent to having a Mazda Miata today. I wasnāt really concerned about having a car that would excite the girls. If the girl didnāt want to go out with me because I drove āthe green turtleā , I didnāt want to go out with them anyway.
Even in later years I didnāt drive a ācoolā car. That didnāt put off Mrs. Triedaq. She also grew up in the country so we both have simple tastes.
With the way the holiday travelers and shoppers have been driving around here over the past month on the highways, I wouldnāt say no to an army tank for awhile 
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Yes, all other things (safety systems, velocity vectors, etc) being equal, the heavier car wins. And?
Iām not trying to be obstinate here, but Iām also pointing out that any 20 year old car is going to fare poorly when compared with a car made within the last couple of years. This does not mean we should automatically only buy brand new Chevy Suburbans for our kids. In the first place, not many can afford, or are willing to spend even if they can, 50 grand for a base model vehicle for their kid. In the second, Iām not a fan of arms races, whether weāre talking about nuclear weapons or vehicles.
The logical end-game is that everyone who wants to be āsafeā and can afford it gets the biggest vehicle they can, only now that there are so many of those vehicles on the road, the safety factor is reduced because youāre more likely to hit one instead of something smaller. So now the āsafetyā conscious public demands even larger vehicles, and before too long our crossover SUVs will be made by Peterbilt, the Honda Fit will be the size of a Ford Explorer, and the world will be even dumber than it already is.
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