Non Car People - who raises there people?

Tom1200 said:

Yesterday afternoon we had a new fridge for the garage delivered.  The delivery guy was in his twenties, he walked right past my sons VIP LS400, the F500, the Datsun and didn't even bat an eyelash at all the memorabilia tacked to the walls.  I'm sure he didn't even see the motorcycles.

We were probably his last delivery of the day so I get the guy was probably dog tired but clearly he simply wasn't a car guy.

A guy in his twenties not into cars; how does this happen? Who raises these people???................I don't comprehend this at all and I'm truly concerned about society.

 

There might be a simpler explanation than all the heavy duty cultural and generational stuff offered above.  I think many service people are instructed to just do their jobs and not make comments about what they see.  That's probably a good idea.  Maybe you don't want to know that the guy that showed up to fix your heat/AC/septic tank or whatever noticed your cool and rare toys, knows exactly what they are, what they're worth, where you live, what hours you work, and the how to unlock the door. 

So what defines a “car person?”

My wife couldn’t care less about racing or performance mods and doesn’t know the first thing about how they work. Yet, she likes our Focus because it’s fun and yellow, thinks R53 MINIs are cool, and didn’t want a Dodge Caravan because she doesn’t like how they drive.

Is she more of a car person than a mechanic who doesn’t get excited about cars because it’s just a job?

In reply to ShawnG :

Younger me would've placed them in the same category as horse carriages, I thought if it wasn't a sports car and/or been on a race track it's an appliance.

The same can be said for why aren't more people into computers? Most people are consumers/users, they don't care how the machine works.. they just want it to WORK. They're not enthusiasts, I've very recently started getting interested in computers again after years of not caring.

Car enthusiasts are the minority.. I was a car person of my own making. It turned out my dad was a car enthusiast to a certain degree, a decade before I was born, but I didn't learn this until the past few years. My brother is a millennial who doesn't drive and uses public transit to get around all the time in Chicago. I specifically chose the location of my apartment to be close to public transit to get around my city and be close to my office.... plus I own E36 M3boxes.. I wanted the option to take the bus to my office if my car is down..

Most of my friends are car people, but I also have a set of friends who are nerds like I am and view cars as appliances. Hell I VIEW most cars as appliances.

Side note: I generally don't like the majority of the car community. I just don't jive with it, and how most performance cars get used makes me laugh or cringe.

I refer to myself today more as a track rat, than I do a car guy. To the average person, I'm just a car guy. But among car guys, I pretty much exclusively hang out with track buddies. I want to be at the racetrack hanging with my buddies driving or volunteering and making Gridlife events happen or both.






 

He could be a car guy, he's just not into the cars you have 

It's not that the people who aren't into cars are boring or were raised 'wrong'. It's that their passions lie elsewhere in life. 

I, for one, cannot imagine how anyone actually enjoys electronic dance music (EDM). For that matter, I don't understand how anyone likes Guns 'N Roses. Yet, attendance at a GNR concert or an EDM Festival would demonstrate that I am the minority outlier there, not the other way around. How could anyone think that trash is music?

Similarly, when I talk to my students, at 35 years old they assume I'm well versed in whatever pop culture thing they're into. They look at me like a three-headed alien and say, "How can anyone not know who DJ XYZ is?"*

*The only true response to this query is to shake one's head and say, "Music has been going downhill since Buddy Holly died." Then storm out muttering under your breath when someone asks you, "Who is Buddy Holly?" 
 

Uncle David (Forum Supporter) said:

Tom1200 said:

Yesterday afternoon we had a new fridge for the garage delivered.  The delivery guy was in his twenties, he walked right past my sons VIP LS400, the F500, the Datsun and didn't even bat an eyelash at all the memorabilia tacked to the walls.  I'm sure he didn't even see the motorcycles.

We were probably his last delivery of the day so I get the guy was probably dog tired but clearly he simply wasn't a car guy.

A guy in his twenties not into cars; how does this happen? Who raises these people???................I don't comprehend this at all and I'm truly concerned about society.

 

There might be a simpler explanation than all the heavy duty cultural and generational stuff offered above.  I think many service people are instructed to just do their jobs and not make comments about what they see.  That's probably a good idea.  Maybe you don't want to know that the guy that showed up to fix your heat/AC/septic tank or whatever noticed your cool and rare toys, knows exactly what they are, what they're worth, where you live, what hours you work, and the how to unlock the door. 

Yep, I agree. Guy may just have wanted to get on with the day and not get caught up in a conversation.

As far as the comments about younger people not being into cars. Yes, I believe there is definitely a decline of interest.  You can blame expense, the rapid decline of interesting new cars, and the fact that society seems to be teaching the last couple generations that cars are bad. Remember, in the years to come they will be the ones making the rules, and we will subject to their whims....

I'm not actively raising my kid as a car guy. I figure he can choose his own interests. Also cars are pretty much instruments of genocide for teenage boys. I was a good, mostly sensible kid and it's only dumb luck and a little skill that got me through my teen years without a life-altering or ending experience in a car. In the next couple years I plan to get him a 4th gen N/A Legacy like mine, probably a 5-speed with a horked engine and we'll swap in a good spare engine I have as a father and son project. He likes working on projects together (YESSS!) and I think he will be pretty motivated to have some wheels. 

My daughter is borderline car girl. 

She likes helping a bit, and dreaming of things to do to them. She also likes disassembly,  and going to cruise nights. 

Shes almost 12. We'll see how she turns out! I don't discourage her interest in ANYTHING,  as long as its healthy. 

I had my son at a CAN-AM race at Mid Ohio when he was 2 weeks old and he's been to IMSA, CART and F1 races through the years.  Also has some seat time in the FMod.  Yeah, he's a car guy and is now a Subaru dealer mechanic in Indy.

Now, my dad was not really a car guy, as I would term it, but he was a big DIY guy including car maintenance and didn't mind helping when I wanted to do minor mods to my cars.

My eldest is a car person in the same way others are "hockey people" - He is a fan, and he'll watch, but he has no interest in actually doing it.

My youngest is from another planet I have not discovered yet.

How about this theory. When I was a youngin cars broke down on a regular basis. More folks had to.be familiar with mechanical thing and more people had some form of tools. Now cars are as reliable as a washing machine, so they are appliances. 

My Daughter is 4 and has attended a few car events with me, visited Daytona when we were on vacation in Florida, but doesn't enjoy the noise so much.

She does enjoy working with her hands and is curious about what I'm doing in the garage, etc.  I always take the time to try and explain it to her and give her small things she can do to help.  She likes to drive with Dad in the Focus RS.

My son is 2 and is completely enamored with cars.  Makes the car noises as he runs around the house, etc.  Has to have one of his cars with him when he gets changed or goes down for a nap.  He's never been to a car event in his life.  COVID put a damper on that.  That said, lots of content online and of course CARS is his favorite series.  He likes to ask "WhatchudoinDaaaaad?" whenever I'm working on something.  I'm looking forward to including him in more things around the house and various events.

First you guys know when I post these I'm not truly serious, they are more poking fun at the fact that I know my hobby is utterly redicoulous. How can I describe a hobby that sees me spending countless hours and dollars just so I can pound around the same 3.5 miles of pavement.

As for what makes a car person; regardless of whether it's simpy liking a particular car, being a track rat, vintage racer or showing your 63 Plymouth ,the fact that you have activities that a car is a central feature to my mind makes you are a car person. 

As for car snobbery I find that utterly ridiculous. My physical therapist told she views a car as an appliance to which I replied "most people do". 

In reply to ShawnG :

I feel attacked!!!  Lol. 

I would love to see all of those classic cars, they’re absolutely awesome.  Heck, I’d probably BS with you for hours about them but I’d never be able to afford any of them.   I’ll admit the Mustang is a fun car, not a collector car.  That said it’s my toy and I don’t lose sleep at night worrying about what it cost and whether I dare drive it.  Makes me smile every time I drive it, that’s what counts on my end. 

GTwannaB said:

How about this theory. When I was a youngin cars broke down on a regular basis. More folks had to.be familiar with mechanical thing and more people had some form of tools. Now cars are as reliable as a washing machine, so they are appliances. 

This might be part of it.  This was our lives?   
 

My dad was a motorcycle guy. My mom is a car person, and stepdad is a car person (drove to challenge with me from UT!)

Of the five of us kids, I'm the only car person. Youngest bro is only 11 though so we'll see. 
 

My kids are too young to tell. 4 and 2, and both really like riding around the block in my car but that's probably because I call it "the race car" and they don't have to sit in their car seats for rides around the block. (Judge me if you want, it's quite rural here and I'm willing to bet 90% of y'all had similar experiences as kids.)

My parents used to put me in the cubbie hole of their Beetle to get me to sleep.  Probably why I am the way I am today...

I think our idea of car people is skewed to the extreme. Most of us here can decipher hundreds of nonsense gibberish car abbreviations as second nature and unless you are on the same level of us with your random useless knowledge we may not think of you as a "car person"

But I see all levels of interest being in the auto industry. Little old ladies will not know what engine their miata has but say something like I love my car it's fun to drive, or recently I was checking cars out for a first time driver and he continuously brought in ratty old performance cars that always had major problems, when he finally asked our opinion someone said If you want to get from point a to point b just buy a Camry. The next week he had us look at a red 4 cylinder Camry, with a manual. It checked out fine, we told him it should serve him well, and when it was all said and done he said he got a manual so it would be more fun to drive and he picked red because all race cars should be red.

SWMBO for example drives a Chevy Volt, but she is very interested in wrenching on my junk and learning, she's even made some 1/4 Mile passes in the Volt. Occasionally I will catch her listening to car podcasts. She doesn't have the vast knowledge like some of us, but she is without a doubt an enthusiast.

What I'm saying is I see all kinds of people that most wouldn't consider enthusiasts, but are enthusiastic about some type of car or part of the auto world, which may vary wildly from what we are enthusiastic about.

In my world people that have literally no interest in cars beyond appliances, is far in the minority to people I consider enthusiasts. 

I really like talking to these fringe enthusiasts, they are much less jaded than the rest of us, they will rant and rave about the virtues of their preferred car, without qualifiers like yah it's slow, or it doesn't handle etc. It's just stuff like, "yah My avalon is so nice, I named her Pearl, she handles way better than my old Tahoe, and my brother bought a Corvette but when I was building a deck I put 17 bags of concrete in the trunk and he can't do that with a better."

You want some weird performance metricsz talk to these people

In reply to 11GTCS :

I can't afford any of them either and all of us in the shop would love to talk your ear off about them.

As for the toxic car culture, once you get past the rabid fanboys, you find people who just love old cars, any old cars.

The wife unit and I lucked into a private, after hours tour of a very large car museum, just by being friendly and chatting up the curator. I didn't know what some of the stuff was and simply asked. On the other hand, the curator was shocked at some of what I did recognise. We had a couple cars they don't and they had a ton that I had never seen.

I spotted that their Duesenberg was a replica from 40 feet away, lol.

The best part was rounding a corner and saying "Oh wow, you have a Tucker!" The reply I got was "Yes we do, want to sit in it?". I did and I did! 

Most car guys I've met are more than happy to talk your ear off about what they like if you just ask them. Don't B.S. them though, the guy already knows about his own car.

I had a guy come up to me at a car show with my Turbo Trans Am and proceed to tell me that he had the only twin-turbo 1973 Formula ever built by the factory. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was in the Trans-Am parts business at the time and I also had a 1973 Formula. He was so full E36 M3 that his eyes were brown but I just let him ramble on.

When it gets right down to it, I love anything with wheels on that makes a noise. I've flogged V12 Ferraris within an inch of their lives but I've honestly had the most fun in stuff like Model T Fords. 

A guy I know is just getting into the car hobby at around 50 years old. His first classic car is V4 powered Saab 96. He goes to car meets, tours, Carbs and Coffee, shows, etc. He's having Ferrari fun with Model T money. That's what it's all about.

I pretty much like everything from Beetles to low riders to old sailboats.

I've been into cars & fixing things since I was really young. My son pushed his first car home from down the street when he was 13, an Escort GT that he got for $5.00. Him & his friend got it to the driveway, came in the house & announced his new found treasure. We got it in the garage & had it running & driving the next day.  He sold it to a family friend who also had a broken lawn tractor which he knew we could fix. Had it running & cutting & he sold it for $500. He then used that to buy a blown up '88 Supra turbo.  So he had 2 cars & a lawn mower before he could drive - 14. 
The Supra took a full rebuild & was way to much car for a 14 year old. We sold it for $5,000. Then came many Honda's & Acura's. We still work on cars together. He turbos them I usually do stock fixing/rebuilding but it's common ground that we still share after 17 years. 

BlueInGreen - Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

So what defines a “car person?”

My wife couldn’t care less about racing or performance mods and doesn’t know the first thing about how they work. Yet, she likes our Focus because it’s fun and yellow, thinks R53 MINIs are cool, and didn’t want a Dodge Caravan because she doesn’t like how they drive.

Is she more of a car person than a mechanic who doesn’t get excited about cars because it’s just a job?

Do you have to be a pilot to be fascinated with aircraft? I'll bet less than10% of the 600,000 people that go to Oshkosh fly. Its just something in your guts. 

I tend to not think of myself as a "car guy". 

I like well made things, period. Cars, tools, clothing, airplanes, boats, bicycles, furniture, coffee, food, houses, a good mathematical formula, good experimental design, etc.  

I learned to appreciate craftsmanship and effort at a young age. My father was a contractor and my mother worked her way up from secretary to CFO for a series of manufacturing companies. Ultimately being CFO of a company that made electrical sub-assemblies for Ford Motor Company. Quality work and effort paid the bills and kept me fed as a child and paid for a portion of my college too. 

Ultimately, I think this is really the heart of the matter. Whether you like cars, bikes, dance music, or a well crafted short story is irrelevant. The mindset that is necessary to appreciate those things is one that appreciates the effort and hard work of the individual(s) who created the given product. In a world where we are increasingly removed from the means of production - pride and respect of work seems to be becoming more rare. Or rather, I think it takes longer to develop in some folks. 
 

My father was a funeral director.  All of our cars were black.  Ask me about my love/hate for black cars sometime.  We had a couple of manual cars that I loved and my mother said I loved to get in them and watch how they were operated.   I could no indulge any type of car passion other than washing cars, due to the fact we lived above the funeral home.  So I was the classic car kid with hot wheels and match box cars.  Then I had older brothers with cool cars.  I still was not able to work on any cars or get a junk car, but I was allowed to hand out at the local gas station.  I thought that place was so cool, I cannot describe what it looked like in my eyes.    I wasn't able to get my hands on real cars until my early twenties.  I feel my car guy genes were repressed.

My kids were raised with road trips, they were members of owls head transportation museum and saw whatever car museums and shows we could get to.  My daughter now will not go to an auto cross or a drag strip, and I don't know if she will ever go to a museum again.  She is secretly proud she can drive a stick and has a love for her honda fit.  I still feel there is a car person in there, my wife tells me to drop it.

My son was raised around all types of cars, but has a total love for any type of beater.  If a car has a pop rivet he is all over it.  He has had a love affair with two miatas and no is passionate about his wrx.  Two kids, same house.  Oddly my daughter is the more fun kid to have help you with a project.  It may be a patience thing, or she just likes projects.   My son is like me, happy behind the wheel.  I wondered what would happen when he had his license and we both had to drive.  Now we split up the trips.  My daughter would never ask to drive.  Two kids, same house.

I have tried to raise them both as car people, but had different results.  At least my daughter has a genuine love for her car, and was part of the minor resurrection of it from a junk yard.  We live in a community where many of the kids drive either new or close to new cars.  I consider it a  win that she didn't bat an eye about a junk yard car, and has helped fix what ever was wrong or has gone wrong with the car.  My son ostensibly  hates turning wrenches.  Two kids, same house.  Last night he helped fix his girlfriends truck and loved working in a garage with heat, a lift and any tool you needed.  So maybe he has just been frustrated working in our garage, we will see.  But yes, he is def a car guy.

I do no understand people who don't like cars.  If you have to spend all this time in one, they should put a smile on your face.  I wish that the fast and furious movies had stayed with their tuner roots, I see that culture as at least a hope of keeping some of the kids interested.  God help us, that may do more for getting kids into cars than anything else.