The BritishV8 Pub

It’s no big surprise that the younger generations don’t seem to have any interest in our hobby.
The skills and the passion haven’t been effectively passed down to the younger crowd.
I’m going to lay this one out on us old farts. We seem to secret things away.
We hang out with our old buddies and build @#$%& and reminisce about the old days.
The younger, “digital” crowd has no idea. They need us to inspire them. To show them more than the Nintendo world.
I’ve been hanging out with my 10 year old grandson and my 12 year old granddaughter. We have been having a blast building @#$%&.
We’ve done old mechano sets to death, built every thing from a RadioShack electronics kit, taught them how to tig weld. And now we are taking their old kids 6v Daytona kids car and rebuilding it onto my old Dart vintage go kart.
They are enthusiastic beyond belief and can’t wait to work on it every weekend.
It does my heart good, and lets me know that our hobby isn’t dead just yet.

Many things have changed and even more is going to. They have been riding the digital age bubble and it can't last. Somebody has to produce food and goods. Get this, kids today have no idea what a file or a folder is. They don't use them. Everything is an app so they have no need to. Consequently they are clueless when faced with a fundamental computer issue like a bad entry in a config file. Just think about that for a minute. Something that one of us would have no issue with and they don't even know it exists.

Now at the same time they are as observant and curious about the world as kids have ever been. They soak up information like a sponge just as kids always have. When something doesn't work they will want to know why. And some of them will be enthralled with the computer age while some will be completely intrigued with other things like transportation, food, and yes of course, money. Just like always. I'm not too worried about our future, like us they will see things that need to be fixed and go after them. As it should be. We won't see some of those things due to immersion. Others that are glaringly obvious to us will be overlooked and we won't understand why. We may never understand why, but the system is largely self correcting so I for one am not going to worry about it too much.

I do think it is wonderful that the youngsters really seem to like our 50 year old cars. Maybe they will bring back the styling that made them so great. One can only hope that in this age of dreary and drab modern cars they will find a spark somewhere. Have you noticed that all the cars these days are either gray, black or white? And all look alike. How much more dreary and drab can it get? Something needs to be done about it.

Jim

Great ideas but HOW do we reach enough, to keep it going ? How do we pass on, getting down and dirty is ok ? I have a 24 old grandson with a Subaru BRZ. He considers himself an auto enthusiast, ( His like/ kind, gather in a parking lot and talk about their cars). Not likely any could change their oil or plugs.
Age gap or plug gap ? Art.

Before I retired earlier this year, I worked with several guys who are in their 20's and 30's They are into cars just as much as I was at that age. Several of them are mechanics which of course makes a difference, but some are not and just like to tinker around with cars/trucks.
Surprisingly a lot them like the old school stuff of the 60's through 80's. One guy has spent many days at swap meets looking for an original "bare foot" gas pedal made from metal. I was surprised to hear this and he said that all of that old school stuff from the 70's is really popular. He said that it's got to be original and not the cheap plastic knock-off stuff made today though.

Bill