Quote:
Originally Posted by Nostril Cheese
Since when are young people interested in cars these days?
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LOL, stop reading all that snowflake click-bait nonsense
Try getting out there and meeting car guys who are not your age.
Do, you really think these snowflakes don't turn wrenches?
They swap out suspensions, turbos, intercoolers, wheels, coilovers, and engines like their underwear.
They also swap out intakes, exhaust, and flash tune the cars as part of the overall build process.
Many years ago, I saw an ad for 2004 Subaru WRX STI.
Yeah, $21K for an Impreza? But it's had basically every performance part swapped out for an aftermarket improvement. I don't even know what half that **** is. According to that dyno sheet it makes 362hp.
Years ago I had an illuminating conversation with a young co-worker. Kid was just out of the army, and was really into his Honda (I forget what it was, maybe an Accord.) He and I chatted about all the mods he did to it, including some ludicrous audio system with multiple DVD screens in the headrests. I commented that I didn't understand why anyone would spend $15K+ plus modding an econo car to make it faster, when they could take that money and buy a used sports car that was already fast. His take was that it was cooler to mod a car to make it faster than a sports car (I didn't get into whether a ricer car could actually be "faster" than a dedicated sports car, but that wasn't the point. In his mind, something like a 363hp Accord is faster than a 300hp 911.) The idea is that "built > bought." As in, only old people buy a fast car, cool people build one.
As kids, we had the exact same underdog anti-establishment mindset. We all called it a “sleeper” car as we always dreamed about “putting a 454 into a Chevy Chevette” and “blowing the doors off some spoiled brat whose daddy bought for him”. Congrats, we are now the establishment. You and I don't think like that anymore. But lots of ricer kids do, and it's a dedicated car culture. An elite suburban town where old guys own "weekend Porsches" is not remotely representative sample of the 1000's tuner car kids now posting on IG and how to's on YouTube.
It's pure fantasy to think that car culture was thing great big thing before cell phones made all the kids zombies who ride bicycles until age 30. "Youngsters" aren't into P-cars, because they can't afford them. They're into Japanese tuner cars like the WRX and Civic, because they're cheap, and there's a huge aftermarket of cheap parts and mods for them. (And they have four doors and seats for hos and bros.) Those kids are hardly afraid of getting their hands dirty wrenching; in fact, they can't stop themselves from swapping out parts and modding the crap out of them until the car becomes a monstrosity to older eyes. The Pelican audience probably has no idea this is going on, and concludes that because they don't see 19 year olds buying 911s and tuning them, they don't care about cars. The youngsters who care about cars are definitely out there, they just don't care about Porsches, or can't afford to.
Also, what about pickup truck culture? It's not a thing on the coasts, but elsewhere lifting and modifying big American pickups is a huge thing.
When someone laments that young people aren't interested in cars these days, I just see someone who is completely out of touch and living in a bubble.