5 Best Cars to Buy College Students

JUST AS THEY DO over clothes and music, parents and teens often clash when it comes to buying cars. While affordability, reliability and safety are often top priorities for parents, teens tend to focus on more esoteric concerns, like "will this make me look cool?"

To help allay some of those tensions, the folks at Kelley Blue Book recently released their picks for the top new and used cars for kids heading back to school. Overall value was a top priority for cars making the list, says Jason Allan, road test editor for kbb.com. The price tag needed to be low enough (below $18,000 for new cars) so as not to make parents shudder when their kid leaves the back seat littered with gum wrappers and empty cans of Red Bull.

And while there are "very few unsafe cars put out on the road today," Allan says, safety features like anti-lock brakes and airbags also figured prominently. After all, the crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is four times the rate of drivers who are 20 and older, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a nonprofit that conducts annual crash tests of new vehicles. (See IIHS's most recent crash test ratings.)

Of course, KBB didn't forget about the coolness factor, which was gauged by how fun a car is to drive (think speed and handling) and its technological features, like GPS navigation and MP3 player compatibility.

We sifted through KBB's back-to-school favorites and picked the best in terms of value, safety, fuel efficiency, reliability and of course, that elusive cool factor. (For KBB's full list of the best new and used cars for students, check out kbb.com).