Whither Chrysler?

Posted by: @jack-dodds

.......Having said all this, I don't think that the average person gives a damn about tradition anymore when it comes to automotive marques and their rich heritage; just us older car nuts.  Change comes at us faster each passing year it seems....

I quite agree, and for someone who has always worked by imbuing high street fashion with a touch of traditional class and glamour, this has been a real challenge for me - and my clients. A stark wake-up came whilst travelling on the metro in Guangzhou, where the trains have little T.V. screens to show films - and of course advert's. I realised that the vast Asian and Pacific market were watching films that casually mixed White Russian historicism with the St. Valentine day's massacre and the Third Reich. Meaning, visual language, truth, were irrelevant and that irrelevance has now reached 'our shores'.

My favorite Chrysler, in Jack's color:

@jack-dodds, I do believe younger folks have a strong sense of tradition. They're just not our traditions. As we witness the rising collector car market for cars like the Pacer, early Japanese sport and sporty cars, even cars like early Honda civics and VW GTI's, we are also watching their traditions come to the fore. If we decide to deride them for their choices, all we are really saying is that our group has no room for them to enjoy their cars the same way we enjoy ours. 

So, I'm hesitant to throw cold water on their excitement. Those are the cars they grew up with and aspired to. In so many ways, they are just like us. 

@jkuvakas  I am aware there is an interest in cars within the younger generation and that it is relative to what they appreciate and I think that's great.  What I was getting at is that I don't think the percentage of young people interested in cars is nearly as great as in our generation.  I have contact with a fair number of them but rarely hear them talking about their perspective of vintage cars and rarely do I see any of them driving anything other than transportation.  I also think that people in general are less interested in cars and styling than what I observed adults around me chatting about regularly when I was a kid.  Maybe that is because there are so very many choices and the styling is more generic.  Most general automotive conversations I  overhear these days are based on mileage, maintenance costs, warranties and such.

@jkuvakas John you are quite right.  I had a 'young' client visit the other day, and seeing some model cars, open a discussion on interests.  His was console games of the 1980s and all over Paris we see graffiti of nintendo figures made of ceramic tiles. The '80s are all the rage and I guess the car of choice might be a Golf Scirocco.  I told him that if someone started playing a console video game in a pub we'd get up and leave due to the awful beeps, and yet we could happily sit through the din of a pinball machine.  Different generations' popular culture.

I'm part of a Fiesta ST owners club. Almost all of them are much younger than me. They are passionate about their cars and regularly engage with owners of Rabbit GTI's and any other hot hatch clubs out there.

I drop into one of several tune shops (you don't mod your car nowadays, you "tune" it, sometimes with hardware, others with electronics) in our area where you can always find a group of tuners chatting about making their cars go faster. On weekends and at night, things get crowded.

The future collectors are out there. They're driving stanced cars with fart-can mufflers and wild color combos. There are not just a lot of them over here, it's a worldwide phenomenon. You probably saw the video I put up a few days ago about the Bosozoku craze over in Japan. There are similar things going on elsewhere. 

The problem we have is many of us look at them and think they're silly and not really cars, just like our parents thought of us. The other factor is most of these cars come out late at night (after 9:00 PM) when you and I are snoozing! 

Telling them all their cars look the same and are no fun like our cars were causes them to turn away shaking their head and saying to each other, "They just don't get it."...just like we did!!

@jkuvakas  Hahaha...."fart can" mufflers.  Well I hope you're right because it would sure be a shame to see car shows disappear over the coming years.

@jack-dodds, we have a few local shows that feature domestic cars in the morning and the imported, younger crowd in the afternoon. In all cases, both shows are well attended. Still, there are clear lines of demographic and age separation with little overlap in attendance. The older crowd is predominantly lawn chairs and dad-sneakers. The younger crowd in tats and t-shirts. 

I learned a startling lesson when finally I understood that the post war generation's popular culture, that I loved so much, was based too heavily on consumption to be sustainable.  I think that is also reflected in young people's outlooks, as material possession is not hard-wired into their mindsets as it is in ours.  They're just as ambitious and driven, but not for physical objects - and the art and beauty that we all love was born of addicting generations to possession of physical objects.