Guest Post by Eric Peters
One of the reasons why the car industry is in trouble hasn’t got to do with politics – the mortifying effect of slow, regulatory strangulation of the car industry – although that’s a big one.
The other one is one the car industry has done to itself. It has alienated its future, which is the rising generation of drivers – a great many of whom cannot afford a car and so have never developed interest in driving one. That, in turn, means little-to-no-interest in buying one – because what’s the point in wanting something you know you can’t have?
A related example will make the point.
Harley-Davidson motorcycles were once the motorcycles for young guys who esteemed the idea of an iron horse and the freedom it represented. Today, Harleys are mostly bought by guys in their 50s and 60s, who are pretty much the only guys who can afford a Harley. The bikes – which are big and fancy and expensive – cater to this crowd.
Young guys mostly can’t afford them – and (worse, for Harley) mostly don’t want them. It is a kind of two-wheeled iteration of what a wise GM executive once said about how you can sell an old man a young man’s car but you can’t sell a young man an old man’s car.
You probably see the problem.
Within 20 years, most of Harley’s customer base won’t be in the market for a motorcycle anymore. They’ll be in the market for an assisted living facility.
It’s not quite the same as regards the car industry – but it’s also similar, in that most of the cars the young crowd might be interested in are much too expensive for the young crowd. As a case in point, the ’24 Mustang I just reviewed (here) is a very desirable car; very much the kind of car I would have desired when I was 22 or so. The problem is there aren’t many 22-year-olds today who can afford a car that starts just shy of $31k – not counting all the cost-padding “fees” and taxes one must pay on top of all that. Plus the insurance, which has become exorbitant for people in their 40s and 50s with “clean” driving records.
Forget about it if you’re 22 with a few tickets on your record.
I mentioned in my review that it’s a shame Ford doesn’t offer a version of the Mustang like the versions of the Mustang that were available from the first year the Mustang was available – 1964 – all the way through the early 2000s. When I was in college back in the ’80s, Ford offered a base, four cylinder (no turbo) version of the Mustang that was an economy car that had the virtue of being a Mustang. The good looks of the GT with much better gas mileage and a much lower price. It wasn’t quick, but it was fun to drive, because it was available with – it came standard with – a manual transmission.
The point is that Ford used to make Mustangs for everyone – and for every budget. The performance versions got the limelight but Ford sold more Mustangs when it sold less expensive ones.
And that brings us back to The Situation.
The current Mustang is becoming like Harleys have become in that both are vehicles for older people because only older people have the money to buy them. Ford – like Harley – thus sells fewer each year to a demographic that will fewer, soon. The cohort that will be aging out of buying “fun” vehicles within the not-too-distant future. The same problem besets Chevy, which has announced the end for Camaro after the 2025 model year. It, like the Mustang, is no longer a car for young buyers. And so there are too few of them to sustain the selling of Camaro, which at one time sold in the hundreds of thousands annually. It’s even more dire for Corvette, which has become an exotic car – and so Chevy only sells a few thousand annually and those to mostly older people (again).
What the industry needs – if it wants buyers in the future – is to reconnect with younger buyers, especially first-time buyers. And the way you do that is by selling what young people want and can afford. Not $30,000 crossovers but $15,000 cars that are fun. That have personality. Such cars used to abound; ask anyone who is 40 or 50 today who had one when the were half that age. They didn’t get to 60 in 7 seconds. Some took 60.
Really.
But they did get us to wherever we were headed, on our own. In our own ride. We no longer had to get mom or dad to give us one. We were free, for the first time in our young lives and it was due to the fact that we owned our first car. And that is why those of us now middle-aged and older have stories to tell about our first cars and what we were able to do with them and because of them. Lifelong affection was created.
That is what the industry is now risking losing, with the rising generations. It has already lost what ought to be an alarming percentage of them. USA Today reports that “Since 2000, the number of 16-year-olds with driver’s licenses decreased nearly 27 percent.” This is more than just a canary in the coal mine. It is a flock of vultures circling overhead.
If the car industry wants to continue to be an industry in the future, it must connect with the future. There may be less profit per car to be made selling $15,000 (or less) cars but that could be made up in volume – something Henry Ford understood. And just as important, it made for lifelong relationships with customers who would be buying nicer and more expensive cars over the course of their lives.
As opposed to gray hairs looking at what will probably be their last car.
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But that is the idea.
United Nations Agenda 2030 and environment savings programs from the WEF (such as Net Zero and “15 Minute Cities”) clearly state that the private ownership of motor vehicles will be slowly fazed out.
But don’t worry, there will be driverless communal EVs available for Party Members to take them to the ration dispensary previously called stores, as long as their Vaxx Passports are up to date and they have not already used their monthly Carbon Allowance.
Everyone else will just stay home, to save the environment and remain safe from butterfly flu and other deadly diseases brought on by white-man made climate change.
Cars? Motorcycles?, pffff!, everyone knows that you can only be happy when you own nothing, Father Schwab said so.
I own a 2004 Suburban that runs like a choleric african after eating habaneros,
a 2008 Audi Alroad that might even run better, a HD 1990 Fatboy that is my pride and joy, and a KTM 600 that I sold not long ago because it’s such a beast it scared me into a
panic sale after a particularly harrowing high speed ride. Im too old for that thing now. All my vehicles aren’t worth shit except they are invaluable because I
own them outright and I meticulously maintain them. The only cars equal to these were a 1995 Toyota SR5 pick up I gave to my son..(still running fine) and a Subaru1990 GL that was murdered by a deer at 60 mph in Heney Co a few years back. My dream car is a 1992 Land Rover Defender 110. Only 500 were impoted into the US. Buick engine so it’s reliable.
How many do you think we will have to kill to rid the world of these bastards?
All of them
$15K “fun cars” Thats a hoot! More like a Yugo given the current “rules”
I think you should be able to go to a diner and get a hamburger and fries for $7.99, but at least I know I’m wrong. With $15 minimum wage and the price of beef (not to mention insurance, rent, etc.) they have to charge twice that to have any chance of breaking even.
I think a Nissan Versa is about $17k. If you want to have fun in that, I suggest drunk driving.
You still can here. But even better, that money will easily give you enough meat and fat and calories to live off of for the day IF you cook it yourself.
Maybe because minimum wage is like half of what you have, dunno.
Minimum wage is always the bottom and all costs rise to that level.
The only American car kids can ride in is a police car.
CHS is basically saying the same thing in his latest: https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2024/06/how-many-millennials-will-be-rich.html?m=1
Re: cars/etc, I agree with ad girl that they want less cars to be sold.
Re: homes? Black Rock, who we’ll be forced to rent from. Taxes are turning home ownership into rentals anyway.
Unless their parents piss away the money, millennials will be very wealthy once we Boomers die off and end up passing on the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history …
It has already begun, though — I see it all over in houses owned by folks in their 30s, 40s and even early-’50s who’ve been given oodles of money by their Boomer parents and grandparents to start the transfer while they can.
As mentioned in the CHS article, getting transferred to a nursing home ends up absorbing much of that equity even if it wasn’t wasted. If planned for in advance, could be transferred to a younger generation?
I have no idea how far back they look at financials, but I’ve already had one set of grandparents who lost what they had earned for that reason.
10 years is my understanding. I might be wrong though.
I couldn’t afford cars back then.
Or motorcycles.
So I went back in time.
And bought older cars. And motorcycles.
And I learned to work on them.
I have never owned a new car.
I’m actually frozen in time with the machines I use.
From 1953 to 1995…
Cash for Clunkers destroyed most of the cheap used cars. All part of the plan.
It didn’t help, but you can still find decent used cars for <$8,000.
Bought a new car yesterday. The cheapest used one on the dealers lot was a 2016 elantra, priced at 19,975. You can get a new one for 23,000.
With all of the computerized, technology laden vehicles with plastic and rubber parts abounding, it’s no wonder the demand is dropping precipitously. Cars of the 50s and 60s ran great and still do if properly maintained. My rule of thumb is if it doesn’t have chrome bumpers, I’m not interested. They’ve ruined the car culture like they’ve ruined everything else in this country.
Uncle Sam’s EPA could ruin a wet dream.
Affordable cars? Affordable housing? Pfffff you cattle don’t need such luxuries. Based on your social credit scores you will all have your bugmeal rationals docked for a week. All these posts on TBP critical of your leaders—the last line of defense for Democracy— is quite disconcerting. You just don’t understand the sacrifices they’ve made for all our benefits. It’s very stressful living a child-free lifestyle, zipping around on private jets and yachts in attempt to guide the planet to a sustainable global governance. All hail the technocrats, our saviors!
I don’t think the industry cares. If the executives can make the same bonuses/income/stock options making 100,000 $50,000 cars as it can 500,000 $25,000 cars, it it probably much easier making only 100,000 cars at $50,000. It is looking more and more like many things are going to be for the upper middle class and everyone else can eat shit. It has the benefit of being “Greener” also. No, I think all of this is on purpose.
I’ve got a ’22 Golf GTI which I really don’t like that much. I got it without a test drive because I’d had 3 other Golfs over the years going back to an ’82 (which I bought used in ’95 when it had 262,000 miles on it). They were reliable (especially that 1.8 liter engine VW made in the ’80s) and handled well and did everything I need an automobile to do — get me from point A to point B quickly and safely.
I do NOT need anything that wasn’t on that original ’82 of mine — except, perhaps, heated seats a couple of times a year (I’ll be 77 in 2 weeks) … no power windows, no heated steering wheel, no GPS, no Bluetooth, no backup cameras, no side sensors, no IQ.drive, no touchscreen … just give me the basics — a reliable engine with good performance and good fuel economy, a solid manual transmission (great anti-theft device these days), maybe a manual sunroof (like we had on our ’85 Saab 900S — another great car), disc brakes all around, good rubber on the road …
I love my backup camera for the trailer and the blind spot sensors for retards.
The market for an inexpensive car has been deliberately destroyed by TPTB. Worse, for those of us who are mechanically inclined, the stuff needed to repair and maintain older vehicles is becoming both more significantly more expensive and also harder to procure, especially under the New Communism where I live (example – Stabil – $6.78 at a US Walmart, $18.99 CAD at Crappy Tire). It’s a deliberate war on individual mobility and individuals who repair and maintain older vehicles.
There are no new cars that can be purchased without mandatory airbags, anti-lock brakes, emissions controls, or all sorts of other stuff that makes the car (deliberately?) more expensive, but these cars are still only as safe as the person behind the wheel. Sure, there are still “entry level” cars and ads for them, targeted to braindead millenials and Z’s, where they tout features such as reverse cameras that “beep” to tell them they about to hit something, GPS-by-voice command systems, keyless entries and wireless sound systems controlled via their gagetphone, etc, etc. You get the picture – all bells and whistles that distract and remove drivers from thinking in order to operate their automobile, as opposed to allowing smart, responsible drivers to forego all that extraneous crap so they might actually be able to afford to own and operate an automobile.It’s a deliberate war on individual mobility for the next generation, too.
I LOLed when my nephew asked what the handle was on the inside door of my ’05 Shitfire – he had never been in a car with hand crank operated windows. It’s too bad, since a base model ’05 Shitfire has none of the extraneous digital crap of today’s cars and is still cheap for someone his age to own and operate, if you can find one still in one piece 😉
I highly doubt that there are many young people itching to buy Mustangs or Camaros. It’s not American Graffiti anymore. I assume the car companies are asking young people what they want. I doubt they can run profitably selling new cars for under $25k.
They couldn’t afford the insurance anyhow.
Considering the children of illegals drive more expensive vehicles than the majority of whites I know, both with high levels of debt (slavery) I don’t think any of this matters.
This has been the unstated goal of government policies going back to the 70’s. They clearly don’t want people to have affordable transportation because that makes them harder to control. The problem is much worse than just young people not being able to afford them. I’m older, reasonably well off and I won’t pay the prices for the new vehicles. It’s insane to drop 50K or more on a vehicle that depreciates like a car. I haven’t bought a new vehicle in over 25 years now and I don’t see that changing. They have priced new vehicles out of the reach of much of America unless you’re willing to take on debt that makes even less sense on a highly depreciating asset. I keep expecting it to collapse under it’s own weight. It’s got to be soon as even UAW workers with good discounts say they can’t afford cars anymore.
Your memory is mistaken. My friends bought used cars, or got their parents hand-me-down. Very few bought new.
Back in the 70’s and 80’s cars were somewhat distinct. A Chevy was a Buick and also a Pontiac, but not a Ford or a Dodge. Today, all sedans look the same, all SUV’s look the same, and maybe 2 models of pickups. Lower priced cars are only white, silver and black.
Many teens don’t drive because their parents drive them, not trusting their teen, or their teen’s friends, with a car.