graveyard for petrol driven classics
Discussion
Crook said:
Not to say that fashion isn’t an incredibly powerful force but it can be prone to change. (Think how quickly SUVs have become the car of choice for families. What if the most desirable next generation is only available as an EV…)
This is a crucial point — we are social animals, and our behaviour and choices depends on others, no matter how individual we fancy ourselves. Remember when people carriers seemed a weird choice, the province of odd foreign makes like Renault before Ford's Galaxy normalised them for the less adventurous? EVs will reach critical mass when buying one seems a pretty normal thing to do, and not an ecological/technological statement. Things will begin to motor (sorry) for a mass market when there's nothing remarkable about the choiceanonymous said:
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To use YouTube to gauge whether cars are less interesting to younger people than older people is a difficult medium to use for a balanced comparison.To be interested in a subject such that you would take the effort to consistently film and edit videos of cars or your car, such that your “channel” was considered dedicated to it would mean you’re pretty into your cars.
Taking that notion, even in the older generation I doubt interest levels in cars such that they’re at the same hobby levels are much different as a percentage. I know lots of middle age people who admire a good old classic, but very few who would take such an interest that would have them constructing dedicated YouTube channels.
What I did a poor job of describing wasn’t that younger people are less interested. That’s pobably true. I was just saying the interest isn’t totally dead and all is not lost. I was also saying that there’s no reason if correctly handled by the industry that enthusiatic interest couldnt resurge amongst the young.
Bare in mind when anyone over the age of 30 was a kid, they probably have some sort of childhood memory of either a parent, or friend fiddling about with a dodgy old banger on the driveway. There was no media distraction and it naturally followed you’ll get involved as a sprog and an interest would be cultivated. Cars were less reliable then and more accessible to fiddle with. I have a couple of RC cars. When I take them down the park for a laugh, it’s the adults who like them. In fact the kids don’t even notice.
It’s not helped that most cars owned by parents now are reliable appliances that have an engine somewhere under a plastic cover that gets serviced at a garage. There’s no need to fiddle with it yourself and so as children a modern car remains that dull white box thing on the drive. The only time they feel the need to show interest comes when they need a set of wheels at uni for a means of transport. And then they’re clobbered with high insurance and expensive tax to drive on a system with ears ringing to almost daily messages from government and safety lobbies that driving is akin to a sinful death postponed. It’s not an encouraging recipe.
That there’s any interest in cars at all amongst 20 year olds, or a drifting and modding scene should be seen as a minor miracle. So we’re looking at it at a bit of a low. There’s no reason a new change of propulsion, cost of ownership or re emphasis on enjoyment can’t recapture the younger people. It takes out of the box thinking.
Edited by Buggyjam on Wednesday 17th January 17:28
anonymous said:
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I wasn’t bringing up YouTube to use as a comparison, just citing that interest is still there. Clearly, as they’rd be no videos of cars from younger people if it were not the case?I don’t think I’ve ever said there is broad popularity.
Edited by Buggyjam on Wednesday 17th January 17:20
Buggyjam said:
There’s no reason to suspect that the next generation of hot sporty clean EV that sounds like the BTTF Time machine won’t spark interest. Especially if it can be connected to phones, composite panels changed colours by swapping, no more rust. Who knows?
I don't doubt it, (I have played Wipeout 
) but that will hasten not slow the demise of the petrol engine. Crook said:
I don't doubt it, (I have played Wipeout ) but that will hasten not slow the demise of the petrol engine.
No totally agree, I said myself I hate the idea of the loss of IC cars. But I don’t think enjoyment of cars themselves will be lost at the same time. I can’t see myself liking it but then look at steam trains. Granted there’s some die hards but there’s plenty of enthusiast who seem to completely lose their crap over old diesel locos too ) but that will hasten not slow the demise of the petrol engine. 
Edited by Buggyjam on Wednesday 17th January 17:45
anonymous said:
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I sense from the tone you want to argue for the sake of arguing over details. So I’ll agree with everything you said if it helps I’m not trying to make a case or argument. I’m not in court. It’s just discussion and I was putting ideas across. I’m not interested in heated arguments over it
Edited by Buggyjam on Wednesday 17th January 17:38
anonymous said:
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I’m not filtering because it doesn’t fit my view. As you didn’t seem to understand my view. I didn’t see why I should justify the energetic and borderline rude challenges to a point I wasn’t making on - let’s be honest - a friendly discussion about something that non of us really can fortell.Let’s make this basic. I was saying there is still interest in cars, somewhere amongst the young. I cited some videos from young people. Clearly to make a channel about cars, you have to be interested. So that’s pretty evident.
It was yourself who started this line of using YouTube to rebut a comparative decline in interest. Not myself as I wasn’t really chatting about that. It was also yourself who portrayed that I had stated there was still “broad interest” amongst the young. I never stated this at all. I just said there’s a massive amount of content on YouTube from young people on cars. Which to me seemed to be the case when you searched.
That was beside the point as the kernel was that the interest is still there, in some fashion . I wasn’t attempting to say youngsters are as interested as ever. As you’ll see from my edited post I have agreed that interest has wained.
All I was citing was interest in cars amongst young people isn't totally dead. And I mentioned some videos I’d seen from a youngster. You’re creating an argument based of misconstruing over semantics. If you want to do that I can’t help, but I don’t hold the desire to argue back over things I didn’t say or mean for the sake of satisfying the party that misunderstood who may or may not be trying to induce argument for the sake of it.
It’s just not my ballywack. Sorry.
I think enthusiasm for EV and autonomous driving will pick up rapidly in largely densely populated areas like Europe and the UK. As others have mentioned, the average consumer isn't hugely interested in what propels their car, and might even prefer the experience of 'silent' torque-rich EVs. Living in populous areas also means many of these folk rarely if ever pick a route that would make driving a pleasure. So when the cost/benefit nears current IC cars, take up will be rapid, and charging stations will appear just as quickly.
However what of places like Australia, the US, Canada? Wealthy countries with more dispersed populations may provide demand for IC cars and liquid fuels for a good deal longer. People who live in the more remote places in those countries still have a fair amount of political clout and may be quite resistant to change.
Whether this prolongs the manufacture of fun IC cars I don't know.
However what of places like Australia, the US, Canada? Wealthy countries with more dispersed populations may provide demand for IC cars and liquid fuels for a good deal longer. People who live in the more remote places in those countries still have a fair amount of political clout and may be quite resistant to change.
Whether this prolongs the manufacture of fun IC cars I don't know.
Maybe with the classics there’ll be heritage tracks in distant years when IC has gone. After the Beeching cull steam fanatics were buying cheap steam engines from the Welsh scrap yard. Years later heritage lines popped up. I’d imagine the trains are quite valuable now. Maybe it’ll be the same? Without anyone really to sell to can see a lot of the non rare cars just disappearing or left to rot like old cortinas. Sad to think either way 
Buggyjam said:
Maybe with the classics there’ll be heritage tracks in distant years when IC has gone. After the Beeching cull steam fanatics were buying cheap steam engines from the Welsh scrap yard. Years later heritage lines popped up. I’d imagine the trains are quite valuable now. Maybe it’ll be the same? Without anyone really to sell to can see a lot of the non rare cars just disappearing or left to rot like old cortinas. Sad to think either way
It will be interesting to see how it plays out. As the usage of electric vehicles increases the fuel duty revenue will obviously reduce leaving a bit of a gap to fill. Pay as you go roads I suppose.porkey said:
It will be interesting to see how it plays out. As the usage of electric vehicles increases the fuel duty revenue will obviously reduce leaving a bit of a gap to fill. Pay as you go roads I suppose.
Yeah that’s a good point. They won’t want to lose all that income. I suppose once IC has gone the situation will have had some large changes in other areas through knock on effect. North Sea oil, opec, petrol stations or anything associated with engined cars. 
Whilst I think that classic cars will always retain some sort of allure ( a bit like a painting ) which duo to its rarity caries some kind of value and can be admired for what it is I am a bit more sceptical about modern super/hyper cars. In 10 years time nobody will be able to repair these cars anymore as software will become obsolete or simply not run on more modern operating systems. As there are very few of them there will not be any incentive to continually opdate software versions or it will become prohibetively expensive. A 50 year old combustion engine anyone can fix and it will remain cheap. We will have to wait and see but I’d rather spend 300k on an oldtimer than the next super car.
hornbaek said:
Whilst I think that classic cars will always retain some sort of allure ( a bit like a painting ) which duo to its rarity caries some kind of value and can be admired for what it is I am a bit more sceptical about modern super/hyper cars. In 10 years time nobody will be able to repair these cars anymore as software will become obsolete or simply not run on more modern operating systems. As there are very few of them there will not be any incentive to continually opdate software versions or it will become prohibetively expensive. A 50 year old combustion engine anyone can fix and it will remain cheap. We will have to wait and see but I’d rather spend 300k on an oldtimer than the next super car.
You might be right in the medium term but in say 50 or even 100 years who knows?With so much automation and robots people will have too much time on their hands so what else will they do?
Today's supercars will be the old timers of the future. But maybe all personal transport and thus freedom of movement will be so regulated under the future Marxist super state it will all be irrelevant!
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