Younger enthusiasts are simply shut out of the new car market. The biggest difference between today’s muscle cars and the original period of muscle cars is the old ones really were marketed towards and purchased by twenty something’s and even teenagers with low cost ones like the Roadrunner. The current state of the muscle car market has performance that eclipses all those old ones(in reality a stock V8 MN12 is just about as fast as a stock 400 GTO) but it’s an entirely different market and the cars are really more German sport sedans other than their iconic names and throwback styling - a hellcat Charger may as well be an AMG Black, and it’s Daimler/Chrysler platform roots make that less an exaggeration than it seems - and they have price tags to match.
Younger buyers in general, enthusiast or not don’t buy new cars, the entry model of old was replaced by the used car market some time ago, and that’s a blessing and a curse. There are great used depreciated performance cars you can swing in your 20s, but without you springing the 80 grand for the brand new one the company has no incentive to keep making them either. But that’s a chicken and egg situation, since the exorbitant MSRPs are why younger buyers don’t (can’t) buy them. I don’t think the car enthusiast is necessarily dieing but the supply is being squeezed. Even in the used market there’s plenty of greed pricing out younger buyers, the collector car auctions saw to that. What few project cars are left seem to get gobbled up by every car YouTuber crawling up through the woodwork for their next bit of churned out “will it run?”content. There’s plenty of interested young enthusiasts but may never get their hands on their dream car.
As for the market as a whole, with the demise of sedans, I think the big issue is the automakers ever since the original Mustang catered to baby boomers, their sheer numbers and collective wealth got them preferential buying power. The Mustang was the automotive equivelent of the Beetles for them and bought them in droves, as they settled into adulthood the automakers catered to them with personal luxury coupes like the Monte Carlo(bigger ponycars basically) as they started to have families, sports sedans(preferably foreign), as the kids got bigger the minivan, as they entered their midlife crises the SUV, to be the “cool parent” to stand out from the minivan parents, then as the nests emptied they wanted to downsize to more efficient cars but their knees and hips hurt so automakers came up with the Crossover. Now that boomers have settled into retirement we’re left with that last fad. The stragglers hanging onto their youth buy the latest and greatest dark horse Mustang or mid engined Corvette or their old high school dream car with their savings.
Plus businessmen pushed out the car people from the industry, there’s no Delorean’s or Iacoccas in executive positions anymore, they’re deemed inefficient by the CEOs and shareholders who want profit, profit profit. I fucking hate Tesla and Elon Musk(other than ruining Twitter, which good riddance) but I gave him credit for a time interjecting his whims into Tesla cars, even the dumb Cybertruck, That’s a reason besides the climate change hyperbole those cars are appealing to buyers where every EV from a legacy maker is a lifeless commercial flop like the Lightning or Mach(er)E, there’s a passion behind them… Of course the corporate lawyers and shareholders motivated only by the almighty dollar would like nothing more than to distance Tesla from Musk for stability, but mark my words; watch that house of cards topple when that happens.
Ford and GM are complacent, they have their Mustang and Corvette and trucks to coast on the iconicness of and everything in between is joint venture/globalist junk to keep the dealerships in business. That’s what the fourth Gen SHO was, a shitty cast-off Volvo platform Ford got cheap and morphed it into a Taurus after a few slow selling generations. The Australian Falcon made more sense to bring over as an actual full size replacement, but the exchange rates were too high so we were saddled with the shitty D3 platform and the ancient Panther platform. GM at least had Bob Lutz briefly to get the Holden’s in American showrooms but corporate gave them absolutely zero marketing budget to help them find success, and scapegoated Lutz as everything wrong with the American car business. Chrysler is the only company that gave an appealing range of products in the last decade but only out of desperation to find a merging partner. Now that they have(Stellantis) those compelling products are ending and Dodge now is fielding a shitty globalist crossover called the Hornet until the Dodge brand goes the way of Plymouth within the next 10 years.
Younger buyers in general, enthusiast or not don’t buy new cars, the entry model of old was replaced by the used car market some time ago, and that’s a blessing and a curse. There are great used depreciated performance cars you can swing in your 20s, but without you springing the 80 grand for the brand new one the company has no incentive to keep making them either. But that’s a chicken and egg situation, since the exorbitant MSRPs are why younger buyers don’t (can’t) buy them. I don’t think the car enthusiast is necessarily dieing but the supply is being squeezed. Even in the used market there’s plenty of greed pricing out younger buyers, the collector car auctions saw to that. What few project cars are left seem to get gobbled up by every car YouTuber crawling up through the woodwork for their next bit of churned out “will it run?”content. There’s plenty of interested young enthusiasts but may never get their hands on their dream car.
As for the market as a whole, with the demise of sedans, I think the big issue is the automakers ever since the original Mustang catered to baby boomers, their sheer numbers and collective wealth got them preferential buying power. The Mustang was the automotive equivelent of the Beetles for them and bought them in droves, as they settled into adulthood the automakers catered to them with personal luxury coupes like the Monte Carlo(bigger ponycars basically) as they started to have families, sports sedans(preferably foreign), as the kids got bigger the minivan, as they entered their midlife crises the SUV, to be the “cool parent” to stand out from the minivan parents, then as the nests emptied they wanted to downsize to more efficient cars but their knees and hips hurt so automakers came up with the Crossover. Now that boomers have settled into retirement we’re left with that last fad. The stragglers hanging onto their youth buy the latest and greatest dark horse Mustang or mid engined Corvette or their old high school dream car with their savings.
Plus businessmen pushed out the car people from the industry, there’s no Delorean’s or Iacoccas in executive positions anymore, they’re deemed inefficient by the CEOs and shareholders who want profit, profit profit. I fucking hate Tesla and Elon Musk(other than ruining Twitter, which good riddance) but I gave him credit for a time interjecting his whims into Tesla cars, even the dumb Cybertruck, That’s a reason besides the climate change hyperbole those cars are appealing to buyers where every EV from a legacy maker is a lifeless commercial flop like the Lightning or Mach(er)E, there’s a passion behind them… Of course the corporate lawyers and shareholders motivated only by the almighty dollar would like nothing more than to distance Tesla from Musk for stability, but mark my words; watch that house of cards topple when that happens.
Ford and GM are complacent, they have their Mustang and Corvette and trucks to coast on the iconicness of and everything in between is joint venture/globalist junk to keep the dealerships in business. That’s what the fourth Gen SHO was, a shitty cast-off Volvo platform Ford got cheap and morphed it into a Taurus after a few slow selling generations. The Australian Falcon made more sense to bring over as an actual full size replacement, but the exchange rates were too high so we were saddled with the shitty D3 platform and the ancient Panther platform. GM at least had Bob Lutz briefly to get the Holden’s in American showrooms but corporate gave them absolutely zero marketing budget to help them find success, and scapegoated Lutz as everything wrong with the American car business. Chrysler is the only company that gave an appealing range of products in the last decade but only out of desperation to find a merging partner. Now that they have(Stellantis) those compelling products are ending and Dodge now is fielding a shitty globalist crossover called the Hornet until the Dodge brand goes the way of Plymouth within the next 10 years.
