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Interesting article from a few weeks ago, discussing how US youth has fallen out of love with cars. 'Car culture has just not caught on with this generation...' Click here, have a read. 1960s Cheerleaders by Duke Yearlook, on Flickr
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They need to get themselves to Ocean City for h2o to see that millennials still love car culture
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Garry
East Midlands
Posts: 1,722
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One paragraph from it.
''New car purchases by those aged 18-34 dropped by 30% in the US between 2007 and 2012, according to the car shopping website Edmunds.com. Many American under-35s are now not even getting their licence. Given that so called "millennials" – those born between 1983 and 2000 – are now the largest generation in the US, the trend is worrying car firms.''
Not sure they are falling out of love with cars, just they are too broke to buy new! Lots of people in the VW club I'm a part of will fall into that catagory, none have bought new as loading up a Golf Mk7 or Scirocco on finance makes no sense when you're not 100% guarenteed to have your job in 2-4 years time.
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To be honest though if you grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's you can fully imagine growing up lusting over cars. In fact the cars were so good they're the same ones we lust over now. If you were a teenager right now in America what you have to get excited about? Some bland, anonymous, plastic hybrid? Yes, yes, yes! Hmmmm, not so much,
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^^^ Interesting example - since recently getting into Breaking Bad, I suddenly really like the Aztek!
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Last Edit: Feb 4, 2014 14:57:20 GMT by dbizzle
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I can't comment on life in the USA, but despite being a lifelong car fanatic, I can understand why the current generation in this country might find cars and motoring less inspiring than my generation or before. The cars are dull, the roads are subject to ever more stringent regulation (see the recent article on yet more speed cameras to start breeding on the hard shoulder of a motorway near you), traffic is appalling in most cities and half of them likely as not get their 'driving' fix from allowing a console game like Forza think they are a driving genius. I think the world has changed culturally where, to many younger people, cars are just less 'relevant' in a world of Facespace and Mybook. It's the same reason the demographic that follows F1 is increasingly aged, young people are quite simply, by virtue of price/cost and the green agenda being rammed home at every possible opportunity, just not getting hooked. And despite Jeremy Clarkson's claims on Top Gear, whilst I find the new BMW hybrid technically interesting, it doesn't get the blood pumping like a Hemi at full chat, or a Quattro S1 on full throttle.
Cruising in a '48 Ford with Long Tall Sally as a soundtrack, or in a 2004 Ford Focus with Katy Perry on ... not a hard choice.
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THE PROBLEM IS THAT KIDS DON'T LIKE MODERN CARS/CULTURE ... oh wait. Maybe they just can't afford all the brand new cars, so are spending their hard earned money building stuff like this : Or, dare I say it... Retro stuff...
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Copey
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,845
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Another problem in this country (maybe the US too?) Is the sheer cost! What young person can really afford a car? Buying one is cheap enough, but insurance is bloody daft!! When I was 17 I got a £500 Fiesta and it was near as damn it 2 grand to insure! I get the whole new driver high risk, but even at 21 with no crashes or convictions I was paying nearly a grand! I am now 25 and pay £500 to insure the Sierra (policy started when I was 24) but I know a lot of people my age with boring 1.summert hatch backs that are still paying nearly a grand! That coupled with the fact that full time jobs are few and far between, I currently work part time in a Tesco petrol station, I have engineering qualifications but can't get a job because I am not "time served" so don't have the experience and there's very little in the way of suitable apprenticeships about, which basically means I am on pretty crappy money, which is the same for a lot of people, I know most of my mates chose to move out on their own rather than get a car, I decided to go the other way and stay at home and get cars, just no way to afford both without full time work
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1990 Ford Sierra Sapphire GLSi with 2.0 Zetec 1985 Ford Capri 3.0 (was a 2.0 Laser originally)
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Yeah, insurance here is obscene.
I pay $370 a month (so, uh $4440 a year) to insure my 07 Silverado and '13 Challenger. That is about par for the course for two vehicles down here. To add my '87 Renault will be an additional $65 a month, or $780 a year.
That being said, the vehicle is insured here, not the driver driving the particular vehicle. Anyone with a licence and my consent can drive my car and they're covered by my policy.
Edit: thinking of, a lot of kids here tend to inherit their folks' car and then the folks use it as an excuse to buy new. Either that or they tool around in busted-up, beaten-down old pickup trucks here, doing nothing to them but put fuel in and drive until it breaks, and replace it with another beater.
--Phil
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Last Edit: Feb 4, 2014 16:43:38 GMT by PhilA
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I've read a number of articles about this issue over the past few years. I've always found it intriguing a topic with far too simplistic explanations employed.
For clarification, I'm a 'millenial', born in 86, 27 years old. I am also lucky in that I landed on my feet, have a good job that affords me the luxury of being able to have a second car as a 'hobby'. I don't live in Toronto (where it is a pain in the ass to have a car if you don't own a house with a driveway!) not to mention the QEW/401 Hwy having some of the worst gridlock traffic in the world.
My point is this, there are a whole slew of confounding reasons that interest has declined, in some areas of a given country it might be money woes, in others it's bad traffic/good public transit, elsewhere a lockup/garage doesn't come with your flat. There is no 'one' overwhelming reason, to boil down the argument to that is a fools errand.
There is also I think a HUGE disconnect in how people my age (and younger) VIEW cars as an object that can be broken down into it's component parts. When I was 14, I thought NOTHING of disassembling the family Eversham PC to put in a new sound card, an extra 64 mb of RAM, or to replace the power supply. If your mum asked you to replace the windscreen wipers, you'd follow the instructions on the back of the packet. You'd follow your brother into the local Autozone to find some 'liquid metal' to help your brother patch the leaky fuel tank on his Suzuki Santana jeep before he went back to university. Modern cars are not like that. There is the view that unless you 'know' something about cars, you can't work on them. I am astounded by the number of my friends who when they learn that I have the Datsun view the idea of me restoring an old car as 'really cool' but can't quite get their heads around that I have no formal training in mechanics other than just being dextrous, inquisitive, someone who has read a ton of books, how-to's and just really had a desire to want to know how to do it themselves. No-one taught me how to weld, I read some articles, spoke with Malcolm Vardy at mig-welding, and @mystery Machine and just went for it. I'd go so far as to say that with so many other priorities and the ever increasing complexity of systems around us (your smartphone anyone?) the decline was inevitable.
Cars now, are a whole series of integrated, complex and very different systems working together by some kind of witchcraft. When I looked through the receipts on the Subaru Legacy I recently bought as a daily, the technicians general response to fixing something was to just replace the whole unit part, not waste his time finding it was just a short caused by a faulty resistor...I'm exaggerating but you get my point. On an old car, you CAN diagnose it as needing a new bolt/wire, I'd beg to say that newer cars are quite different in that regard. I think the lack of understanding, or at-least the *perceived* lack of understanding means that a number of people are unwilling to take the plunge and pick up a spanner. I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the reasons there are so many hipster motorbike outfits starting up. Bikes are perceived as simpler (by and large they are) as well as needing less outlay to get a sustainable business.
Lets not forget one of the most obvious reasons. New cars don't look like old cars. Yes they have gadgets, gizmos, good mileage. Do any resemble cars that people desire? Nope. Hell most of those, Lamborghini Miura...Austin Mini..are getting on for 50-60 year old designs! Modern cars don't come close aesthetically.
My two pence anyway.
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I'm not oblivious to the fact that people are still building really cool modern cars but that article is USA specific. In the UK owning and driving a vehicle is such a huge percentage of peoples incomes that doing so purely for fun is unthinkable for all but the privileged few. Look at the modern cars posted above. None of those cars are owned or built by 'millenials'.
I love cars but personally I'm priced out of the game at the minute. I know I could scrape along using the principle of bangernomics but I did that for years and to be honest it was curse word. Driving around in some slammed turd on steelys pretending it was cool and spending all my time and money repairing it. I can't afford to participate in the car scene at a level that I would enjoy so I'm doing without. I know a few people my age with amazing cars but they've all got parental backup and started the game at a higher level than I can manage.
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I think the main issue these days is the feeling of freedom seems to have been sucked out of driving. When I passed my test, my route between my dads & mums houses (Sheffield - Manchester) had 1 speed camera. Now there are about 5 cameras & 3 sets of specs cameras on the same route, nearly every road in sheffield is riddled with pot holes & speed bumps. Most other drivers appear to have forgot how to drive, running a car has gone up(ish)
Driving just isnt fun anymore, as big brother is always watching. I would have loved to have been born 10 years earlier.
My first car when I was 17 (3rd technically speaking, 1st insured in my name) was a 205 Rallye, it cost me £2100 fully comp & I was earning about £345 a month. Just about every penny I made went on petrol lol.
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It was a response to this quote and your selective choice of old vs. modern car. If you were a teenager right now in America what you have to get excited about? Some bland, anonymous, plastic hybrid? No, you get to go to Southern Worthersee or H2o International or any one of a million 'stance' meets, JDM meets, euro meets or whatever, and look at cars like the ones above. Then build cars like the ones at the bottom... The article is lamenting millenials not buying new cars, well they can't afford to, but they still have an inspiring car culture and are still into cars, modern or otherwise.
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It's an interesting subject, and a louse in the pelt of many an auto-exec. The first signals of this have been coming since about '06, and it was very much relevant when I did my master's thesis on it a few years back.
Personally I think it's a combination of factors: a decreasing necessity for owning a car, and the simple fact that driving is more regulated, and modern cars are harder to differentiate on product content. Put simply the difference between a '14 320i and a '14 Mondeo lies more in branding and image, giving roughly the same driving experience, whereas a '72 2002 and a '74 Cortina GXL differ a lot more in terms of experience and content. The car culture defining notion of the car as an embodiment of choice, character and freedom is being ebbed away by all this.
By the way: though the cost of running and insuring cars has gone up disproportionally over the last few years, but it's still worth noting that the cost of buying and running a new car is still much (about 15%) cheaper than it was in the seventies. Relative to income that is.
So my generation doesn't need cars as much, and the cars they do get are perceived as dull. Personally I feel that my generation doesn't inherently lack an interest in car culture. But they demand a car with personality and customization possibilities, in the same way we express ourselves via our clothes, or merely the apps on our phones - in exactly the same way over the years one used to be able to do that with the books in your closet, your Doc Martens, or knowing that by choosing the different options on your lowly 6 cylinder Mustang you knew only 1 in 1200000 would be exactly like yours. This customizability goes a long way in explaining the runaway success of cars like the new MINI, the Fiat 500 or the DS3. Sadly a lot of people are still stuck in resale-metallic leaseboxes.
From that in my opinion there's a damn lot of potential! Young people getting more and more into distinctive and affordable retro cars is a big thing (I drive a '64 Fintail Mercedes because I simply think it's the coolest car around. I really wouldn't trade it for a new one). From a new-car-buying standpoint another big thing to rekindle that love affair with the car will be electrically driven cars, in my opinion. The potential it gives for packaging cars in an exiciting, fresh form is endless. Not having to make room for bulky engines, exhausts and such generates endless potential for some nice, spacy (and spacious) cars that finally won't look like every single car ever. I'm thinking the same kind of form evolution when we went from horseless carriages to the mondern unibody.
I really would love nothing more than to see this. I want the automotive world to move my generation like it could move those before. To give us an similar shock as when we'd be leafing through a car mag full of Minis and Escorts in 1970 and suddenly seeing a picture of a Lancia Stratos Zero. To make a car aspirational for us again something outrageous isn't simply an option - it's a necessity.
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Last Edit: Feb 4, 2014 17:35:59 GMT by mkickert
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The average price for a 17 year old lad to insure a car is about £3000 a year,plus £150ish in tax plus maybe £25 a week in fuel plus an mot at £35 once a year.so about £4500 a year in total to drive.a 17 year old apprentice wage is £90 a week I think,so £4680 a year.anybody else see the problem
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It was a response to this quote and your selective choice of old vs. modern car. It was a generalisation but that's undeniably the way the manufacturers are going. It used to be so much more achievable to own something with a bit of character and performance but these cars are now massively outnumbered by mere 'appliances'. I think the main issue these days is the feeling of freedom seems to have been sucked out of driving. That's the issue in a nutshell I think. Driving in Britain can be an absolutely hellish ball ache. Even when I had my personal 'dream car' I wasn't happy it was just more expensive when it went wrong! Don't get me wrong, I sound like I'm on a downer. These days I just prefer to enjoy other peoples cars!
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Driving a vehicle ... purely for fun is unthinkable.
I wouldn't claim to be privileged and isn't that I don't enjoy driving at all, but when was the last time you just 'went for a drive'? That concept was an integral part of many people's childhood. Usually on a Sunday, with no particular destination in mind, other than a nice pub for lunch. These days, the sheer cost of fuel and the dreadful state of many of the roads (in my county, they are shockingly bad, even on some A roads, never mind country lanes, means that not only is 'going for a drive' irritating, it's downright bloody expensive. Particularly if you happen to miss one of the speed cameras placed 'for your safety'. I remember in my youth, driving to London because we didn't have anything else to do, I doubt many would entertain that notion these days. When I passed my driving test, our cars were focal points for socialising, but the way teenagers interact on the most basic level has changed, and where you might have seen 20 cars on the seafront on a Saturday night back in the early 90's, now you'd be lucky to see two or three.
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,926
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Most face-to-face underground culture has died on its . Even on mad Friday most of the town centres round here aren't massively busy, 10 years ago you'd struggle to get a car down the roads because they were full of people. There's also been the massive death of cruises. When I was 17 I was at a cruise somewhere every weekend, be it Wakefield/Pontefract/Donny or further afield. EVERY Sunday there would be well over 1000 modified cars gather. It was a place to hang out, take drugs and hopefully get into a birds pants. Now that has almost completely gone, its much easier to get into a birds pants by liking them on Facebook than spending hours building a car.
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but when was the last time you just 'went for a drive'? In about 2006 when I had a god awful 1.6 Capri that I loved and hated in equal measure. Petrol was less than 90p a litre and I used to have access to a closed industrial estate on a night (my mate was the security guard). I'm sure you can imagine what went on, on a rainy night on a closed estate full of mini roundabouts. I got a lot of pure hooliganism out of my system in those days. Now I drive as little as humanly possible and walk or ride my bike almost everywhere. I never fire the van up for anything less than ten miles because I find it too traumatic to pay for diesel. I'm aware that I'm whinging quite a bit but I'm going through a particularly dry period even for me. I've never been flush but the last couple of years have been painful. The only car that I really desire right now is the Toyota GT86 but I just can not justify it. I'd love to be back on the scene but a car is a long way off when you're semi-homeless. My van might be boring but I can sleep in it when I'm between addresses
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
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I'm a millennial, not that I've ever defined myself as that before! I just 'go for a drive' about 4 times a week. I don't understand people who're on a forum like this one, absorbed in car culture and spend their spare time working on their cars, who don't just go out for the pleasure of driving regularly. They are the best drives! As for the changing realities of day to day driving (road condition, speed cameras, traffic, etc), in the past 8 years I've been using the roads I've not really noticed any major changes. I've never known roads without speed cameras and lots of traffic. So enjoying the drive is about choosing the right time of day to get clear A roads, or finding the B roads that are always traffic free no matter the time of day, and finding roads windy enough that you never get fast enough to be troubled by the speed cameras! Being realistic, the percentage of car enthusiasts has always been small compared to the masses who just want personal transport. So what people do with cool modified modern cars and what cars the kids have posters of on their walls isn't really super important. It certainly seems to me there's still plenty of modified modern car culture stuff going on, in fact I'd go as far as to say lots of it seems to be coming out of Americas youth at the moment with stance and all that. I wonder if we're waiting for the next big step, as mkickert says. To me the experience of driving new cars in the last decade hasn't really changed. There are more toys and more efficiency now yes, but cars aren't noticeably faster, they aren't noticeably quieter, they aren't even that different a shape (like the move from 3 box saloons to hatch backs). So all those young people who might have been tempted with a new car may well just be buying 5 year old cars and driving them round, happy knowing that they are basically the same experience but a bit cheaper. It reminds me of mobile phones, the first rush when everyone wanted a phone. Then the phone companies refined those phones bit by bit, they got smaller, changeable cases etc but really it's treading water. Then camera phones came along, and everyone went out and bought new phones. It was a big enough change to really inspire people to give up on the phone they were perfectly happy with yesterday, get up off the sofa and go buy a new one. Then another plateau before the smart phone revolution. I think we're on one of those lulls between revolutions in terms of new cars. Its a very interesting point that cars without internal combustion engines (however they may be powered) could be free of some of the packaging con straights on a normal car, it could lead to some really cool designs. Bring it on!* *I'm quite happy living in the past and don't often aspire to any car built after the 70s so it's all a bit academic really!
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Last Edit: Feb 4, 2014 19:38:16 GMT by goldnrust
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