Since my time at the diesel drags in Tulsa last weekend I have been thinking a lot about the whole “young guys in hot rodding” subject that seems to come to the surface whenever traditional or mainstream types of racing are talked about or the hobby/industry in general is discussed. It was great to see the place full of energetic young dudes and dudettes and it stuck out to me because of all the events I have attended, announced, or covered this year, this one was absolutely the youngest by a wide margin. I get tired of hearing the, “kids only want to play video games…” or “no one even cars about getting their license anymore…” discussions. There’s two reasons for that. The first is that half of the adults I know spend more time playing video games than their kids and secondly I have a 16 year old sister in law that just got her license. Like virtually every other kid I have ever seen, she was dying for the day to take the test and get signed off on as a licensed driver. She’s been rolling the wheels off of her Trailblazer ever since that day.
Since it is human beings who actually create “culture” and not the other way around, when did the basic disconnect happen between the 1950s/60s and today when cars were a far more central part of a kid’s identity? People bemoan the fact that no one knows how to do anything any more and that we live in a disposable society where fixing what is broken has been replaced by throwing things away. I am not sure that either of those things can be argued, especially on the automotive front where people in my age bracket (late 20s and early 30s) are certainly less likely to do stuff like change their own oil as opposed to go to the local quickie lube shop and they are certainly more apt to heave a broken widget than attempt to get repair parts to fix it. How did it happen? Were the students bad or the teacher bad? That is ultimately what this comes down to.
Blaming people now for their current state of helplessness with respect to mechanical ability is laughable because even the most brilliant among us had to learn something to get their mind working in the right direction to be mechanical. Yes, there are people who have amazing innate abilities but even they were sparked by someone. Maybe a dad, an uncle, a shop teacher, a neighbor with a hot car. Something lit the fuse than they made burn brighter and brighter. Doubling back on the question, it means that either the previous generation let this group down by not bothering to actually teach them these skills or this generation failed to listen long enough to retain any of it. I know that many of us had our roots in cars established by a dad who shared the same interests. That’s not everyone of course, but most guys you talk to will tell you that their dad was into cars and as long as they could remember, they picked it up too. That’s my story and that’s the story my sons will tell one day. It seems completely insane to talk to a six year old about the importance of torquing lug nuts, but frankly as long as my kids have been around, my wife and I have always kind of treated them as mini-adults. We talk to them like regular people and shockingly they have responded by learning lots of stuff, some important (what a ’55 Chevy looks like) some not so important (math…KIDDING). This stuff is going to stick, eventually.
So if in fact the “baby boomer” generation which was so responsible for the explosion of the muscle car era and the popularity of drag racing and all types of motorsports through the 1960s and into the 1970s didn’t feel that they had time to pass along lots of what they knew or the attitude that they got from their WWII generation parents, perhaps they’re at the root of our “hire someone to fix this” society. The de-funding of auto-shop, wood-shop, and other industrial arts in high schools across the country (by local governments run by baby boomers!) has certainly aided in the decline as well as the moronic public perception that every person should be enrolled in a college studying for a four year degree. Many of the enthusiasts I spoke to in Tulsa had graduated post high school trade schools and they worked in the diesel repair field. Like many guys from the 1960s and 1970s who went to a tech school to become mechanics and continued to be racers/hot rodders, making a living turning wrenches every day. A switch was flipped at some point that caused people to look at tradesmen and people who use their hands every day in a different light than a guy with an art history degree sucking a latte at Starbucks. I effin’ hate that guy by the way.
So again, I double back on the original question. Is it the chicken or the egg? The student or the teacher? I don’t think hot rodding is doomed or that we’re at some turning point in the history of the gearhead world we all love so much, but I do think it is important to try and figure out where and when the tectonic plates shifted and how we can bridge the gap better. Kids still like cars. They like shiny stuff that goes fast and makes a lot of noise. It is almost like we’re forcing that OUT of them as they grow up and not fostering that natural interest into something that could lead them into a lifetime of fulfilling personal achievements, a potential career, and a reason to get out and see the world. Being a hot rodder is the best. It has kept lots of us out of big league trouble and allowed us to make some fun small trouble along the way. Despite video games, apathy, and whatever else you want to blame, it is still an important job to help steer the future of this hobby/industry/etc. Take the time to teach your kids, young neighbors, and anyone else interested in learning whatever you can.
It sounds all campy and cliche but the fact is that the only way this whole deal sustains is when generations pass their combined knowledge, experience, and fun stories onto the ones coming after them. We make the culture…the culture does not make us.
Thanks for reading,
Brian
The world keeps turning either way. The only thing I see going on in the automotive world is new cars are becoming almost impossible to work on at home without expensive equipment. In my mind this just makes the older cars even more appealing to the younger generation.
I drive my Plymouth everyday! Keepin the flame alive!
Having a daughter that is turning 16 in a few weeks. She is skipping the Homecoming dance so she can get her license. Other than that she hasn’t shown much interest in cars other than transportation.
Money. It all comes down to money.
The few jobs 20-somethings can get these days don’t pay very well, even with a college degree, which then siphons off a chunk of money every month towards loans. I pay $400 a month in school loans, I’ve had a project car for a decade that I am slowly, slowly piecing together.
But this hobby is expensive, and I just don’t have the money to do half the things I want to do. I haven’t even gone to a car show in 3 or 4 years because it is frustrating to be around a bunch of old rich guys who don’t even turn a wrench telling me how easy my generation has it and how we’re a bunch of entitled brats.
Meanwhile, the cops break up any gathering of young people in performance cars, and the places these same cops used to cruise with their friends back when they were growing up are now under martial law. A single ticket can mean the difference between breaking even this month and missing a loan payment or electric bill.
Most kids are happy enough to get behind the wheel of any car, but let’s be honest; most people don’t even take the time to change their own oil anymore. It’s almost impossible for me, a struggling 20-something, to relate to a rich baby boomer who dropped a shell and a check off at a speed shop and picked up the completed ride a year later. I work four part-time jobs with no benefits, I haven’t been to a dentist in 4 years, and there is $300 in my retirement savings.
And I am, no joke, one of the lucky ones.
Nail on the freakin’ head right here.
I’m in the same boat. A project that is gonna take forever to do, that I’m lucky to be able to do anything on. A bunch of checkbook rodders bitching at me because it doesn’t fall into their favor. I’m working two jobs, at school full time, the dentist has been left out, I only have medical because the school forces you to buy theirs if you don’t have it yourself, etc. It’s a pain in the ass. I have the motivation, vision, etc. but I will admit I need more skill, and I’m priced way out of my league when it comes to the deeper thoughts of dreaming.
Damn right!
I’m 31. I have cars that I have been collecting since I was 17. I can’t afford to work on them. Hell, I can’t even afford the garage to work on them in! I have a family. I have a sizable mortgage. I am a full-time mechanical engineering student (incidentally, a career inspired by my love of cars and motorcycles). I spend 3 hours a day during the week commuting because I own a house that I can’t get rid of because it’s worth less then I owe (by no fault of my own). There is no time or money left for such expensive hobbies. I do what I can, wrenching on motorcycles and vintage snowmobiles because they are much less of a time and financial commitment.
People are not avoiding careers as machinists and welders etc. because of a lack of mechanical aptitude, it’s because there is no future in it. More and more companies are taking manufacturing overseas to save a buck. Technical careers are where the money is. Lets face it, you have to pay to play and most of us can’t afford it.
I can so relate to your story!! My son(now 12) helps me with my Nova build, I teach-he learns-we have fun and bond…..(and the extra pair of hands is a welcome bonus)
He will probably have his own car by the time it’s legal to drive and even know how most of it works 🙂
I’m a machinist, been one for over 30 yrs. Machine shop don’t seem t be taking on youger workers, the average age in my shop is about 45. I wonder in about 10-20 yrs if there will be machine shops!
I think it has a lot to do with technology. Teens more interested in the new I-phone and angry birds than a new Mustang and Hot Rod magazine.
Brian, I know you’re gonna cringe as this is a politically-based response, but I believe the feds and the insurance companies and the environmental/safety activists have been brainwashing the public and the auto manufacturers to believe that the automobile should be nothing more than an appliance. Gone are the days of fun, affordable 2-dr coupes because the public keeps getting 4-door hatchbacks and crossovers crammed down their throats.
Face it. There are no affordable fun cars left to play with. Hence, the kids you saw in Tulsa (and other areas) have turned to trucks. Trucks are fun now, they were fun 30 years ago and will be fun in the future. They don’t look like a squashed eggs, they cargo AND ass.
Major cut back in funding of almost all industrial arts in just about any school these days! Most new high schools give very little thought of these programs and very different from my generation of high school. I’m in my late 30s and have seen a drastic difference those individuals wanting to get into working on cars. Even if you do have a car, very few people have any shop room to speak of? Then project cars require dedicated space for quite some time and many cities are enforcing not having cars just sitting around the yard without being licensed. With so many vehicles being the disposable kind, who would want to dump a bunch of money into a project that will not last? My last vehicle before I become paralyzed from the neck down at the age of 19 was a 1965 Ford custom 500 sedan! Having this vehicle about two years and completely rebuilding both the top and bottom of the engine. Fuel efficiency was completely out the window with a 352 I was lucky to get 10 miles to the gallon. Now on the highway driving between southern Arizona and northern Indiana three times at 74mph I got about 14 miles to the gallon. This car was an absolute beast 20 feet long and would not fit in a compact parking place! I could fit five people in the back seat easily.. Besides what are the automakers doing to encourage the rising generation to keep and maintain a vehicle? They’re just pushing the next model, especially focusing on safety. Anyway great article and I will be passing along to my automotive friends
All great points for some of the current state of the car world. My kids could care less about driving and reading car magazines. They work and buy their own 360 stuff, so I don’t care. We work to pay the bills and keep the house hold afloat. Nobody makes a new 14 second quartermile car for under 15 grand that would not require a degree in engineering or high dollar tools to service or repair it. So, it’s old school for me, all of the way, save money during the winter, get the car ready for the summer months. Hustle and work swap meets, wheel and deal.
I think that the desire is still there for some, but for a lot of others its much easier to just pick up Grand Turismo V and “drive” every car you ever wanted to than to work hard and build something of your own.
I forgot to mention goverment and unions this crap is hard to work on as a modular mill. $
458 reasons stuff isn’t given for the latest trend.
epa is another fuel prices ease vs necessity were people start from and the competition that is out there all ads up.
Seems rather negative so far. How about this: my daughter built the engine for her high school car, an ’84 T-Bird with a 460/c6 combo swapped in. Took it to the drags, cruised it, cars shows. Now she has my old ’67 Camaro, cruises in it, goes to shows. Her kids, ages 8 & 4, want to take “the red car” when they go places. i have to keep an eye on my 4 yearold grandson. Today he was taking the screws out of my workbench. He can take bolts out of things and put them back. Yes he likes video games, but I think he’ll be able to work on things, just like his mother and grandpa, and great-grandpa.
Obama care will kill anything that’s is left in the pocketbook for us rodder’s, and cash for clunkers will make sure you get no old parts’ and the high gas prices will see to it you don’t drive very far or fast in that 10 sec, hotrod’ and the insurance company’s aren’t going to insure anything after 2013 that’s over ten years old, YES now it will be strictly classic car insurance, and starting in 2014 you won’t be able to by the software it takes to work on the new stuff anymore’ ONLY DEALRSHIPS will have this privalage so there ya’ go; hot rodding will be for the elite only’ or idiots who can afford to write a check because they work 16 hour days making movies…………lol
One Man’s Opinion:
Just look and deal hard on a low-mileage late model ‘hot rod’ – ‘they are out there’.
EXAMPLE: my Nephew – good kid with an eye towards a Rat Rod, I pusuaded(?) into a DHG 2001 Bullitt Mustang with 26 K miles – all original (except shifter -there’s always something – original in the trunk) for $ 11,200 cash. Now this kid earned every nickle the ‘hard way’ paper routes, hustling PT jobs on the weekend, etc. and I tried to explain what a compromise just a Rat Rod as primary transport would be to his life right now. I ‘loaned’ him my Ford-in-a-Ford 5 speed bitchin ’32 roadster for a week (gulp) and after a week of paranoia he agreed. This Bullitt, (found on imboc.com) seriously, is like Brand New – fully documented/all receipts, needs nothing but to be run hard, stickered for close to 30 large originally and when I hit the rev limiter on the drive home, I believe it was the First Time. It sure had a lot of coats of wax and shiny tires though – lived in ‘a climate controlled garage’ per the ad. when we left the sellers (older gentleman who bought it for a ‘retirement present’) driveway, we left a little (large, with lots of revs) burp in front of his house – the last I saw he was holding his chest. . . Immediately drove it at high speed (I bought him a set of tires/balance, stems the next morning as a HS graduation gift, had the oil changed at the Ford dealer in that town – Great guys/Gals) halfway across the country and had a great time and a lifelong adventure/memories… with absolutely No Problems whatsoever.
I love my ’32 roadster, a habit worse than drugs or low women that I highly recommend , BUT I also like a heater, defroster, window wipers, kick ass stereo and good ride on occasion (not to mention a small back seat for getting to know the opposite sex, esp. when I was 18 – now too) Why, for a first car, subject yourself to anything less that a reliable, late model ‘hot rod’ that does everything good ?
Some years ago, when I was 18, oldsters (like me now) used to say to me “Look around, they are out there” I did, – I did find (and buy) a Boss 302 less motor and gearbox with three flat tires, hood on the roof – you get it in a garage on my paper route a sad situation where the son went to Nam and didn’t come back and with a 351 Cleveland/4 speed and a little clean up turned out to be a great first car and a good $ ‘investment’- but today for someone with limited funds, places to work, mechanical ability/mentors – shit man, just buy something DONE, get out there and mix-it-up, have FUN on the cheap.
Life is Short. Hell is full of Nissan Leafs.
and politicians.
Think about it !
Teacher / Student the problem is NO teachers. No child left behind killed industrial arts as we 40-50yo knew it.
Besides the time with dad,7th grade intruduced me to electronis,drafting, woodshop, metalshop and “art(s)”
That set the hook,I hit HighSchool dieing to get in THAT meal shop!
I just dont see the freedom we had to create our own projects.