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Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

Kids today aren't into cars as much as the previous generations were, so the generations of car enthusiast with bedroom posters dreaming of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, of tuning and drifting JDMs, are ageing out along with the cast of Fast and Furious.

Other than some oligarchs, stockbrokers, techbros, and middle aged divorced dads with money, nobody cares that your car is fancy and exclusive.

Same with motorsports who's popularity is aslo dying. The new generation doesn't care about things that go vroom.

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You would think so, but there's a certain subset of zoomers who are _very_ into older cars, especially pre-mid-1990s cars.

Especially here in the Southeastern US... 90% of the time I see an old vette, NA miata, old civics, preludes, E36s, etc...it's some early 20s dude and they've done all the wrenching themselves and/or with their friends/dads. It's interesting to pay attention to the cars you don't see though -- the cars my generation absolutely destroyed -- Dodge Neons, 240SX and Turbobricks.

Most of the high-school and college aged dudes in my area are driving something 20 years old or more and it's not for lack of money -- they've done some _beautiful_ and expensive restorations on these cars.

When I brought my RX-7 home after getting rebuilt I had a gathering of teens at my door wanting to check it out.

It's mainly city kids who aren't interested in cars.

Yeah fair enough. I was talking mostly from the perspective of young European urbanites, many of which now are turning the lack of a driver's license into a status/social symbol and scorn at you if you even talk about car ownership.

Also car tuning and tinkering is expensive and youngsters here don't habe the money for that, they'd rather travel the world or put it in bitcoins than spend it on restoring old Miatas or buying a Tesla.

Motorcycle enthusiasts though don't seem to be lacking.

Maybe among the college educated class but when it comes to young tradies it's the opposite. I know just one who refuses to drive, everyone else is either a proud motorist or in the process of getting their license and saving up for a car.

Yeah it's definitely the college educted class for whom everything is a 15 minute walk/bicycle/subway ride away, who see cars as evil and drivers licenses as unnecessary.

In the country side people love their cars since they equate to freedom as the only public transportation option is a bus the goes to the city every hour.

Very clearly, you haven’t been to a NASCAR race or monster truck rally in at least a decade. Not many oligarchs. Lots of kids.

It's Gen Z's stealing cars now and doing take overs with them, certainly not Gen-Xers.

I mean I'd love to get into motorsports but I don't have the garage space for another car, I don't want to buy a truck to haul it around, I don't want to spend years learning how to work on cars, I don't want to spend money buying new drift tires constantly, and I don't want to cause noise pollution in town

I wish there were a few more places that were like "drive a couple hours into the country, drop a few hundred bucks, and go nuts on a dirt track for an hour or two"

You can go carting at your local outdoor track.

it does not take years to learn how to do most things on cars, especially if you choose an older car. garage and truck are also not a requirement unless your race car is no longer street legal. I’m a novice and have managed to replace all the coolant lines and do some not half bad paint work on my car (90s Acura). Drifting does burn tires, but also doesn’t require your tires be in good shape (they’re gonna get shredded, and the goal isn’t to set the fastest time). Time attack and drag racing are where it gets really expensive, but there are cheap options like auto-cross: https://www.scca.com/pages/what-is-autocross.

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