Auto News 5

I took my recently licensed son and his freshly registered 2004 BMW 325xi wagon to the Tire Rack Street Survival teen-driving program last week, and boy, if I wasn't surprised. Run by the BMW Car Club of America Foundation, in association with Consumer Reports -- which donated its impressive test track in rural Colchester, Connecticut, to the effort -- it was an excellent introduction to safe driving. And unlike some of the pricey driving schools that we of the gearheaded persuasion hope to attend with our offspring before they do anything really stupid, it costs practically nothing. In fact, the $75 registration fee is some of the best money you could ever spend on a young driver whose first car, unlike some I could name, already has working brakes and headlights. Those of us who know what camshafts are and who learned to drive stick shifts at a young age tend to think we're good, safe, fast drivers out of the box; turns out, we're mostly not. I'm not the last word in driver skill today, far from it. But, in retrospect, until I took some advanced training in my late twenties, I fairly sucked.