Do you actually own a car? Anyone who has knows that the EPA's combined MPG ratings are a joke. You'll be lucky if you get 75-80% of their rated MPG for a given car. If your kid needs a car and s/he isn't making that much then the last thing you want them buying is something that only gets around 14mpg. A 10 year old Honda Civic should cost less than $5,000 by now and should get 25mpg on average. My math says that's over $1K net cash in the kid's pocket per year. I doubt they'd sneeze at saving that kind of coin by not buying one of your clunkers...
Young people do not care about MPG. All they care is if they have a car or not. Be honest...when you were 16, did you care about MPG or did you care about buying any car at as low as a price as possible?
Just because you were young and stupid doesn't mean that everyone else was/is. In my case my dad happened to be a truck driver. So, yes, I was well aware if MPG and what it meant to the bottom line of cost to own.
I have to agree, kids are still this way. Kids figure $20 worth of gas will get them from point A to B, not mpg. Also, some of the older cars with poor gas mileage cost less to buy, because the poor mileage is figured into the selling price. There is a fair arguement for that side of the equation also. Not until kids have more choices do they consider other factors like mpg. By choices I mean, money to buy a better auto, insurance considerations, style.