Is Hot-rodding & Hotrods on their way out

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Texas Red

Texas Red

Old Flunky
FABO Gold Member
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Many thing have come & gone during my lifetime if 67 years..... Something came up between our car group and the big question was asked "Is Hotrods & Hot-rodding on their way out?
I asked and have continued to ask where is all the young guys & Gals we used to see 20- 25 years ago joining car clubs trying to unseat the older folks who have held club positions, secretary,
treasurer etc.....within the club for years. My comment was where are these young folks at ?????
The truth is the average car of today has to have a communicator put on it to diagnose the problem plus we no longer have dads who are teaching their children anything about the car.
Before anyone says "I do" Yes there is still a few teachers left in our world but where I'm going with this the numbers are not out there.
The planned take away of the average guy being able to fix his own car/ or truck is just another stepping stone of all the garbage. I dont feel like I am alone on this subject.....
Tell me what you see happening ........Have a blessed day .......Texas Red
 
in our area we are not seeing younger people joining established clubs. Our snowmobile club, fishing or hunting groups, anything that is run by volunteers is all 50+ yrs old. There’s a few young guys at car shows, they are into the cars they saw as teenagers so just not our era stuff
 
1) they aren't joining "clubs" because too many are just filled with drama. I'm 56 and won't have anything to do with being in a club. too much bullshit.

2) kids can't afford to be in the hot rod/muscle car thing anymore. the cars we could pick up for 100-500 bucks are now closer to 10 grand and piles of crap. can't just go to a junk yard and get cheap parts for them anymore either. there are exceptions to everything but thats the jist of it.

3) kids understand the computer controlled stuff. they don't have an issue with it. and to be honest more modern cars perform better in every way possible.

kids are also more into what they grew up around. import weekend attendance would blow away any muscle car type of event when atco raceway was still around. there are plenty of young people into cars, just not the same cars you are into.
 
When you were a youth...

1) what distractions did you have?
2) how many hours did you have to work to afford those distractions?
3) what percentage of the things you did were solo endeavors? (We don't want to know how much you beat your meat)

Now do that same evaluation for modern kids.
 
My wife's son was 19 when I met her, and he didn't have a driver's license yet. He finally got it at 21, when we finally stopped driving anywhere. My wife bought him a car, and paid the insurance for the first 6 months, and I took out and taught him to drive safely.
He did like my Dart, and seemed to be interested to some extent in cars, but spent all of his time on his computer. Now he's almost 40 years old, owns a Tesla, and still spends all of his time on computers. His profession is a programmer/analyst, and he claims he has PTSD due to spending too much time at a damn computer!
SMH!

My first wife's second son was interested in Darts, and he did have a couple of them, but I have not seen or heard anything from him in over 20 years.

For the most part I have to agree with many of the other posts on this thread, costs, lack of guidance/experience with fathers or peers, and other distractions and interests are the main reasons why we don't see many of the younger generation getting involved in this hobby.
 
Oh good, another thread about the future of the hobby and how the next generation doesn't care. Let's throw in what's going on with classic car prices, and let all the misanthropic members with a persecution complex whine about how nothing is like it used to be and how everything is worse now.

Every generation, EVERY GENERATION, has whined about the up coming generations, you can track this back to the earliest written words.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

― Socrates

Yeah that Socrates. Generational Blame: A Brief History

Good news! In the future you'll be dead, so you won't see what happens!

abodyjoe said:
1) they aren't joining "clubs" because too many are just filled with drama. I'm 56 and won't have anything to do with being in a club. too much bullshit.

2) kids can't afford to be in the hot rod/muscle car thing anymore. the cars we could pick up for 100-500 bucks are now closer to 10 grand and piles of crap. can't just go to a junk yard and get cheap parts for them anymore either. there are exceptions to everything but thats the jist of it.

3) kids understand the computer controlled stuff. they don't have an issue with it. and to be honest more modern cars perform better in every way possible.

kids are also more into what they grew up around. import weekend attendance would blow away any muscle car type of event when atco raceway was still around. there are plenty of young people into cars, just not the same cars you are into.
Click to expand...
Exactly!

Dan the man said:
As I said earlier, Modern kids are more into technology. They like the Modern crap, like electric cars,computers.
Click to expand...

And 100 years ago guys your age were complaining about the kids being into those new-fangled automobiles and motorcycles instead of taking care of horses.
 
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Hotrodding and hotrods are still being enjoyed by younger people more than you know, they're just doing it in a different way!

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Change. Change is constant. The answers are never simple. High school kids can't but a Duster for $100.-. I went through 3-4 parts cars in that price range in the 90's. Wish I had one or two back. Hard to get into hot rodding for the same money as we did in the 70's-80's.
 
The younger generation is into Japanese cars from the 90s, because those were the cars that were around when they were kids and now that they're adults they're buying and investing in the cars they wanted growing up. There are tons of groups and meet ups for Japanese cars.

The next "mopar generation" behind most of the people on this forum are mostly into modern Challengers and Chargers. Some goofballs are into Volares and Diplomats.

Mopar-ing is ridiculously expensive for what you get. You can buy a better, faster car off the lot for what a mint vintage Mopar costs. Even 20 grand will get you a lot of modern used car, so why would anyone buy an A body that they can't drive half the year and is slow as f--k.

Mopar-ing will go through the same crash Ford Model As did. They used to be ridiculously priced and then everyone died and 100k cars dropped to 20k.
 

put it into this context:

how old were the cars when you were getting into it? 10? 15 years old? maybe 20?

i know for me they were 25~30 years old and for the most part they were considered old cars. now those same cars are 50+

what would you have been working on in your teens or 20's that was 50 years old?
(trick question for Rusty, cars hadn't been invented yet)

so big surprise that kids today wanna work on stuff they grew up around that's 15~20 years old and you can find in what few junkyards are still around.

then there's the money factor. which we've covered ad nauseam.
 
Lots of people are hot rodding cars but its the newer stuff. The local police just shut down some illegal racing last week. They tagged 100 cars.
 
Texas Red said:
Many thing have come & gone during my lifetime if 67 years..... Something came up between our car group and the big question was asked "Is Hotrods & Hot-rodding on their way out?
I asked and have continued to ask where is all the young guys & Gals we used to see 20- 25 years ago joining car clubs trying to unseat the older folks who have held club positions, secretary,
treasurer etc.....within the club for years. My comment was where are these young folks at ?????
The truth is the average car of today has to have a communicator put on it to diagnose the problem plus we no longer have dads who are teaching their children anything about the car.
Before anyone says "I do" Yes there is still a few teachers left in our world but where I'm going with this the numbers are not out there.
The planned take away of the average guy being able to fix his own car/ or truck is just another stepping stone of all the garbage. I dont feel like I am alone on this subject.....
Tell me what you see happening ........Have a blessed day .......Texas Red
Click to expand...
I live in more of a retirement/tourist area and I can say here young and old are into new Vette's Camaros, Mustangs and Challengers and new sports/supercars like Lambos and Maserati. The other thing is young people communicate through social media with friends and others so meeting in person at a club I just don't see them as doing. I mean they can be in a group of friends and are still texting and not communicating face to face.
 
1MeanA said:
Lots of people are hot rodding cars but its the newer stuff. The local police just shut down some illegal racing last week. They tagged 100 cars.
Click to expand...
And probably zero of that 100 were vintage mopars.

The Mopar guys were all probably too busy keeping people off their lawns
images (20).jpeg
 
tom999w said:
Hotrodding and hotrods are still being enjoyed by younger people more than you know, they're just doing it in a different way!

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Click to expand...

Agreed.
I love the license plate on the wall
My Bigscreen Beyond 2e VR headset arrived on Friday, and i spent the weekend shooting down MiGs. My son's Meta Quest 3 arrived yesterday afternoon, and we got him set up as well. Only now that he has seen and flown in VR has he shown any interest in flight sims.

I don't have the chair yet, but i did get a very nice HOTAS. My rudder pedals still leave a lot to be desired, and they should ne replaced by Mrs. Claus.

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Here you can see where MiGruff took a bite outta Crime, but Crime shot him down and still made it back to base!
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If y'all are so concerned about the survival of the hobby, do something about it now, it's on you too.

Encourage someone, take a kid to a show, talk to the younger enthusiasts, offer to help someone.

Car clubs:
Have your car club lower the entry fee, or make it free to those under a certain age, or just free.
Club members get no rewards, God forbid. Around these parts they just give them to each other.
Pay it forward, not back to each other.

Sell a part or project car without trying to squeeze every dollar out of it.

Own it and get creative, or stop wondering.
 
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