I have something to share that seems pertinent to the discussion,
@Iowan. First, mom's are usually great. Me and my mom aren't the best of buds, but we're okay. The thing is a lot of moms don't know what they're getting into when they endorse/don't endorse a vehicle or so has been the experience with my mom and dozens of moms I've known over the years. When I bought my Jimmy, my mom didn't talk to me for months while my dad really liked it. She thought I wasted my money, and that I shouldn't have gone to Nashville (7 hrs) to get it. I wanted to get into an unmolested Jimmy before they appreciated to where they weren't feasible so I did, and now people ask through the roof prices for most of them, and a lot of them are modified in some way or ways. I got mine, and I'm happy. I think it was a good investment, and it'll only get better from here. Fast forward about three years. My mom, the same mom, just let my little brother buy an '02 Dodge 3/4 ton extended cab with a Cummins 24 Valve, and I'm assuming a 5 speed Getrag. I was pretty opposed to that, as I know my dad would have been. He said those trucks were garbage, and the only good thing about them was the Cummins. He would have said that a big ole lifted thing like that was too much truck for someone who just started driving with almost zero driving experience. I had a lot of experience behind the wheel when I first started driving, my old man started teaching me out of the cradle, and I was driving his F350 dually for him when I was 5, and he still encouraged me to get things like a C10 square body, El Caminos, and this one '63 Nova sedan. Start out smaller with something cheap, accessible, and user friendly but still cool, minus that Nova. I know you're not just starting out, but the moral of the story is that moms don't know it all. My mom went too far with how she acted towards me when I bought the Jimmy, and now she went too far again, I think (maybe trying to compensate for our falling out back then), going along with something so damn intricate, potentially faulted, and huge for someone who's turning eighteen tomorrow and has some mechanical intuition but is just starting out driving.