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Comment by more_corn | Hacker News Reader

Not sure where you’re getting your information. There is a huge market for classic cars. Ever heard of Concours? Most of that crowd like to keep them stock, but there are tons of sub-genres like drift kids and Stance nation to name a few weird ones. Hotrodding is alive and well.

There are car shows in most major us cities featuring hundreds of tricked out, restored and modified cars.

The classic car market regularly appreciates. Just try to find an Alpha for a good price, or graph the price of a 1970 911 over the past 30 years. Also you can insure a classic for cheap since they see less road time, are garaged and generally well cared for. (see Hagerty)

As for getting hotrods and restored classics on the road. California has half a dozen classic car rallies where roadworthy classics get out on the road for a couple days.

I assure you the culture is alive and well.

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Correct. It has moved from a home hobby to an elite show. The number of young (ie poor) people doing tuning up their own cars is practically zero. The average young driver cannot change a tire, and I'd bet that half those under 30 have never even popped their hood let alone modded anything. Hotrodding is now all rich people "getting stuff done" by shops, always on their second or third car. The closest we see on the street is the occasional muffler mod, usually only installed as the cheaper option after the stock pipe has worn out.

There are many young people (myself included, though not nearly as skilled as most) that are modifying their cars in pretty substantial ways. Just in my own friend group there are multiple under 30 with their primary car being a heavily modified sports car. I myself own 2 relatively old sports cars (90s Acura, and 00's Audi), both obviously in manual, both of which have had significant work done in my driveway. The way that I would frame it instead is that the concentration of interest has increased. Nowadays with social media, etc, there are infinite ways to learn about, do, and compare various modifications to cars. People who do not care about cars are now in a position where essentially zero knowledge is required to use them as a method to get from A-B. However, those who are interested in it for process of building itself still exist, and the resources are better than ever. For the time that I've been around, I've been seeing increasing, not decreasing, interest in older car platforms primarily for the reason that they are easier to work on compared to new cars.

A "hot rod" need not be a "classic car" and I'm sure that most Europeans don't know nor care about the nuance that we understand as Americans.

They mean "that 5.0 Mustang doing burnouts at 2am" not a '32 Ford coupe.

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