I hear you. I was blessed that I didn't have to pay for my first two cars, although there is a bit of a caveat to that. I only had the first one a year, it was a rolling death trap, and it was unwise to take it on the highway. My dad got tired of me asking to borrow a parental vehicle when I wanted to go out of town, so he ditched the clunker and got me a new one. A '97 Ford Escort, it had zero coolness or manliness to it, but I drove the hell out of it for 9 years. It lasted me the rest of high school, through college and beyond, and didn't give up the ghost until it left me stranded on 183 in Austin one day.
The hilarious thing was it was a stick, and I didn't know how to drive a stick at the time. You need a lot of self-confidence when you live in a small redneck town where everyone has trucks, you have an Escort, and for several weeks you might stall out at any given stop sign.