Too young, or wrong area?

Alright, time for someone in their early 20's to chime in....

I look at it this way.... All of you "older" people have these muscle cars because that's what you grew up with and hung around in your youth. It is the exact same thing with "ricers" nowadays. "Ricers" are just the same for my generation as muscle cars were for the 60's and 70's generations.

Also, a good mucle car is hard to find for someone that doesn't know where to look. Most teenagers that buy their own cars (and don't have daddy pay for them) want something that they can go ahead, get into and drive. No teenager wants to spend the few years of their youth restoring a classic to driving condition. It's a lot easier to find (cheap) replacement parts for a 90's Mitsubishi Eclipse or a 240sx than it is for a 72 Ford Torino (BLAH!).

Plus, what's the difference between gearheads working on muscle cars and gearheads working on ricers? Nothing.... The only difference is the car. There are just as many "tuner" cars out there as muscle cars, and their just as nice (blasphemy?).

Oh yeah, let's face it, "older" people have the time and the money to work on classic cars....

Originally Posted by Beoweolf

'Not too sure about the complaints I'm hearing. I have to wonder if its a case of instant gratification?

I can't begin to tell you of the kind of junk I drug home...to fix. Seats that needed 2 blankets to sit on, if you didn't want a broken coil worming its way up your backside, windows that would not either roll up and stay up or would roll down. Doors that you had to either climb through a window or go through the passenger door (or backdoor - my first "hot rod" was 4-door Fairlane). Rusted fenders, rusted roof (also dented from local kids using the roof, hood and trunk as a trampoline)...I or actually my best friend and I would drag these POS junkers home and get them running, one way or another.

I'm not trying to hurt anyones feelings, but I can't help but think kids are turning their nose up at stuff they can afford - then complain about not being able to "anything". What they want is fully finished car for free or just enough that they can brag about the "steal" they got from some low life, who didn't know the value of what he had.

I'm completely with Beoweolf on this one. I dragged home the same sort of junk or worse. Plus, kids today have so many more hobby choices that we who grew up in the '60s did. Video games, 'texting'..wish somebody would explain the purpose of this to me someday, My Space, scoring MP3s, paint balling, rollerblading, hanging out at the mall and such along with overindulgent parents buying their kids whatever the hot new 'toy' is, along with the good old standards of sex, drugs and rock&roll fill in the time that a young guy or gal with an interest in cars would spend building a rod.

V8 powered cars with hot rod potential are out there cheap...look at the Parts car section of eBay as one example, but they're cars that today's youngin's would turn their noses up at. Running, or close to ,'77-'79 T-Birds, Cougars, LTD II's, '81 Granadas, mid '80s Crown Vics and Impalas plus many more cars of every flavor can be bought for crusher money or less and built into great "first cars". Even the oldies like Galaxies....I paid $500 for my '64 Custom RUNNING in '03 are findable with some patience. But Generation Y, Z or whatever other doesn't see that potential the way we Baby Boomers did.

BTW, we're having the same problem in local circle track racing as the median age of fans and competitors keeps getting higher. Granted, racing a Late Model, DIRT Modified or even a Street Stock is hideously expensive unless Daddy has money. But all of the local tracks have 4 cyl FWD classes where a kid can throw a $100 roll cage in a beater Neon or Escort and go racing for $500. But most of the racers in these classes are 35 year olders and up that could never afford to race until now.

Jan

Originally Posted by dbu8554

I blame bad parenting on why younger people are not into cars.

You guys talk about younger kids fixing up rice cars that suck and everyone has well guess what? I view mustang owners the same way for the most part they are everywhere even classic ones so for me they do nothing special, but I can respect people who take pride in their ride and treat other people just as well.

Easy on the Mustang guys! Actually I agree. I love Mustangs but hell if I never see another row of fully restored BORING ass vintage Mustangs it will be too soon. Really, stock they SUCK! I really like the restomod route. Thankfully there are still enough around that you can get a deal on a driver.

As for the younger folk. A lot just get cheap little econoboxes that have no pretensions of performance. My first car was a 67 Mustang with a 289 three speed but you always wanted to $helby it up. What car do you emulate when you have an '85 Corolla or Sentra.
The other side of the coin is the parents who buy their kids cars. They get good sensible or even high end cars cuz they don't want Biff or Muffy broken down ( and if they do they have parent supplied cell phones) They don't seek out and old car to fix up and when your first car has all the bells what exposure to raw unadulterated old cars did they have? The cars I grew up with all had big V8's and drum brakes and live axles. Most younger folk today would crap driving one of them ( especially when the axle jumps out on a curve on a bump!) It was even an adjustment for me when after not owning an old car for a while, when I got in my buds '68 Cougar, I asked myself WOW we drove these things! But they seem civilized compared to a model T!! It's all relative and an evolution and the future is not looking to bright for the internal combustion engine. China will suck the oil dry the way things are going as they want there turn in the sun with the auto lifestyle.

I bought my first car (actually my dad bought a 63' pea green, three on the tree, rambler station wagon as my first car from the neighbor because it was a real decent car and almost a give away) ... but the first car I decided I just had to have and bought was when I was 16 years old.

It was a 1967 Camaro SS350. I saw it in a driveway in a nearby town with a "for sale" sign on it. The price was $950.00 and the car was obviously six years old ... seems pretty amazing to recall that as I type here in 2008

Anyway, I drove that car til 1973 doing only maintenence to it ... I got real familiar with changing the clutch. It was my Pride and Joy and absolutely one of the coolest cars in my neck of the woods. I have to admit, this car was NOT a hobby, it was my car and I drove it. I eventually sold it for $1300.00.

Fast forward to 1998 ... We wanted to buy Queenie a classic muscle car and she liked the first generation Camaros so we looked long and hard finally finding a "plain jane" 67 Camaro seemingly worth purchasing ... Asking price $6,500.00 and we got it for $6,000.00 and I thought we had done real good even though that $950.00 number kept popping up in my "shaking" head

Granted we have done a lot to Queenie's camaro but I can't even begin to count the number of folks who stop and holler at us in the front yard or knock on the door wanting to buy that car for atleast double what we paid and they have no clue how nice it really is. They just know it's a Camaro. I don't think Queenie would sell it for $20,000.00 so it's not a real issue. I suppose the point is the kids of today arent' likely to be buying the sort of cars I have always wanted. As previously stated ... lots of real poor condition stuff out there for more than it ought to be worth and the nicer stuff is finacially out of reach for a youngster to buy.

My ugly son really likes "The Yellow Monster" and he drives it with pretty decent skill for a seventeen year old kid ... but there is no way I could imagine him finding one to buy and then fixing it up ... it just isn't in him, I don't think. Not to mention he couldn't haul his drum set around in it very well anyway

as the father of an 18 year-old boy i can tell ya i blame ''easy finance for newer cars'' on young guys not picking up the hobby.
when i was 18 there was no dollar down finance period

Time for me to chime in here too.

My son, 20 years old, isn't into hot rods at all. It just isn't his thing to do. Why?? Beats me....it's not because he has never been exposed to it around the home front. I ALWAYS have some car project going. Most times too many. But, I can tell you this. When he was in high school he never had a shop class. They did away with them for budget reasons. So a car with a good stereo in it is more important to him. Go figure, I lost too much of mine during Air Force days working on jets.

When I go to the car shows, and I go to many, they are ALL graying men there. Sure, we have more $$$, but I think it has to do more with what we grew up around the 50's, 60's and 70's with the automobile scene. Remember all the manufactors were selling performance. Ford had "Total Performance", Chyrsler had all the "Ramcharger" stuff, AMC had the performance Javelins, "Big Bad Packages". GM had the vettes, GTO's, 442, 409, etc. All of that was major advertising too. It's just a different time.

I tell my young mechanics, at my shop, about how we built power was swapping parts off of the other cars to make ours go. My parts came from the junk yard. 4 barr. intakes, solid lifter cams, 312 cylinder heads, double hump heads, etc. They are just all ears and wide eyed. I was telling one just yesterday, "Why do you think we like multi-carburation so much"? You had to put a couple of carbs on your car, because they didn't make large carbs. then. You needed the carburation. Heck, most 4-barr. were like 400-450 cfm.

When I was a young gearhead the older guys always were swapping in larger engines. Mostly Caddy's and Old's. They were OHV, large displacement with lots of torque. Heck, most people don't know that Hurst got it's start making engine swap motor mount and transmission adaptors, BEFORE the shifters.

We're just progressing...but we are a dying breed. I'll enjoy it and believe me I try and pass it on when ever I can.

Off of soap box now....

its just the sign of the times us older folks(i'm 37 though some may not call that old)growing up i always liked the older model camaros,mustangs,and of course javelins.as i look at the youth today i sometimes laugh at what i see car wise those oversized tires spinners and those butt ugly spoilers(in some cases)that these cars have but thats whats hot nowadays.but i agree with the consensus here that owning old school muscle is just gotten too expensive.ths is why i opted for the fairmont i bought it for $700 off of craigs list minimal rust and running and i don't plan on going overbaord on the mods either eventually i want to drop a fuel injected v-6 and aod trans in the car but for now will try and keep the 3.3 running and get the body and interior together.

I'm 40 and when I was in my teens (early 80's) the cheapest cars to buy were the 10-15 yr old trucks. Some guys had cars but those too were 10-15yrs old which just happened to be used up, clapped out cars from the late 60's to mid 70's. Who really thought too much about collecting any of those cars back then? I know I didn't. We beat the heck out of anything we could get. I can only imagine how much that 383 Challenger that I had is now worth....I'm sure I couldn't afford it today.

Kids today have a lot more things to play with like computer games and the internet so it figures that many that are strapped for cash like we all were will spend their limited money on things that will provide the most entertainment for their dollar.....just like we did. Our entertainment was cruising because there was nothing else to do on a Friday night after the football game. Cruise down to the liquor store, get a buddy that looked 18 to buy some cheap PBR and a gallon of cheap Boones and then go find some girls (who were also cruising out of boredom) and try to get them out of their pants....that was our entertainment before the internet.

The kids today that are interested in cars are going to buy what they can afford which are 10-15 yr old cars/trucks. You know, 15yrs ago was 1993 so most of the cheap stuff is front wheel drive "rice" or pickups.

Originally Posted by steharz

as the father of an 18 year-old boy i can tell ya i blame ''easy finance for newer cars'' on young guys not picking up the hobby.
when i was 18 there was no dollar down finance period

There's a good bit of truth in that. Why buy a crappy used car that will eat up your limited cash when you can finance a cheap new car and spend the rest of your cash on gadgets like in-car DVD, PSP, and stereo equipment?