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As a die hard car enthusiast. This makes perfect sense. We are going through a culture change in society. Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to

As a die hard car enthusiast. This makes perfect sense. We are going through a culture change in society. Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine) Combined with the brutal performance of modern EV cars. Muscle cars seem like a waste of time/energy/money/complexity. Logically it makes no sense. I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.

ismokedoinks 1y ago
The kids yearn for JDMs
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Do they? It seems like its the 30/40 somethings that yearned for the JDMs back when we were young, who are the ones still yearning for the JDMs.
PaulHoule 1y ago
Don't forgot to lay some of the blame on trucks, SUVs, and the chicken tax. [1] American car manufacturers aren't interested in making anything that can't be classified as a "light truck" because then they'd have to compete on a level playing field with foreign brands. So every kind of "car" has disappeared. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
- twoWhlsGud 1y ago
  This. If you are completely surrounded by light trucks as you grow up, then you are much less likely to ever think of actual cars (muscle or otherwise) at all. I grew up around 2000 lbs BMW 2002's (and the like) - a kind of vehicle that simply has vanished. So I could imagine lightweight sport sedans as a thing. If all you know are SUV's your concept of vehicle is going to be very different...
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Auto journalists keep repeating in the same deadpan voice as the brainwashed soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans exclusively want big vehicles. It's not that there isn't some truth in that but the real truth is that (a) the publications won't get any chance to review vehicles if they don't toe the line [1] and (b) since the 1970s if you went to an American car dealer trying to buy a size S car they would try to sell you an L, looking for a size L they would try to sell you an XXL, etc. I remember going to car dealerships with my dad, there was a brief moment after the 2008 financial crisis that this wasn't the case, but by 2015 the major Japanese brands of Honda and Toyota were doing the same. [1] One take on the fall of Intel was that they were "high on their own supply" for the last 15 years and journalists were too intimidated to tell them they were wrong with the exception of Charlie Demerjian
    - wombatpm 1y ago
      But the vehicles today are dumb big. My second car was a 1978 Buick Riviera. 17.5 feet in length, two doors, rear wheel drive, 403cuin 8 cylinder. It weighs in at 3500 lbs, had 15 mph rated bumpers with shocks attached to the frame. Steel roll cage, double steel doors. The car was a beast. You could fit 7 adults in the car and two dead bodies in the trunk. My grandmother was t-boned in it. They straightened the door and replaced the glass and it was good as new. That was a big car! I wish I could buy a car like that with modern antilock brakes, transmission. Instead it’s all trucks and SUVs because people like my mother feel “safer” and like seeing from up high. Look at the specs of a modern vehicle. Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.
      - Bud 1y ago
        A lot of this is true, but also, look at the safety records of those modern vehicles. They protect the driver a LOT better. A totaled car is just a car. Getting paralyzed or killed is a lot harder to fix.
      - kelnos 1y ago
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan make plenty of trucks in the USA, they get around the chicken tax directly. The move to trucks and SUVs seems to be more about consumer sentiment that I can't really understand (I'm a big fan of sedans), it isn't just some hack around the tax system.
  - eldaisfish 1y ago
    it is profit for auto makers, not consumer sentiment. larger vehicles have larger price tags and larger profit margins. Remember that the US auto companies spent billions of dollars in marketing and lying to people that they "need" vehicles the size of tanks.
    - murderfs 1y ago
      People want vehicles the size of tanks. Auto companies are spending billions of dollars to get people to buy their respective tank-sized vehicles, not to turn people onto the segment in general.
      - mc32 1y ago
        People with families have been fooling around with larger vehicles for some time: station wagons -> minivans -> SUVs -> CUVs. It's not new.
        riffraff 1y ago
        Most of the time people drive SUVs alone. I go for walks in the morning and there's a road bottleneck and it's hilarious and sad to see the cars queueing up on both sides, huge ones, with a single person in them, every morning. I do own a station wagon, and it's shorter than most SUVs, and I use it for long trips, but let's be realistic, that's not what most drives are.
        potato3732842 1y ago
        >Most of the time people drive SUVs alone. Most of the time people drive sedans alone. If people bought based purely on passenger need 99% of vehicles on the road should be 2-seat coupes, pickups and vans.
pstuart 1y ago
I think there will always be a desire for the "vroom vroom" factor, as well as the ability to work on it without an EE degree. I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense. I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.
- stavros 1y ago
  I agree, like there's always been a desire for a well-groomed horse.
hervature 1y ago
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this. I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.
- RatchetWerks 1y ago
  You are perfectly correct. I’m morphing love of modifying cars away from performance numbers but into a way to build mechanical art and enjoy emotional moments with other humans. I’ve realized that was the whole point all along. EV or IC it doesn’t matter. Just the statements above
rconti 1y ago
Even outside of EVs, cars have gotten to the point where you're barely driving them anymore, anyway, you're more of a "human in the loop". You can't really see out of them anymore (other than the windshield, of course), so most people have stopped trying and just rely on the "systems". * Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to * Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe * Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent * AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc. Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone. I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.
- mingus88 1y ago
  And good riddance? Car culture has killed livable cities and I am not going to miss loud and obnoxious cruisers playing games on public roads
  - platevoltage 1y ago
    Seriously. I've had more fun on my bicycle than I ever did during my car phase.
    - rconti 1y ago
      Doesn't have to be just a phase, I love both!
      - georgeecollins 1y ago
        Bike rack on my Camaro! But I am fine with car culture passing, it makes sense.
        1y ago
Balgair 1y ago
As a former gear head there is also the perception issue. Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them. The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least. Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore. Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)
- georgeecollins 1y ago
  Another big problem is that performance is so much better than it was in the golden age of muscle cars. Lots of BMWs and Civics today would blow off the fastest car imaginable in '68-70. Of course the latest muscle cars also improved, with engines that are like 400- 1000 hp (really just that Charger, but a teen in my neighborhood has one). That's just really a dangerous amount of power for a daily driver. A lot of electric drivers don't realize how much the potential power is taken down in daily driving to keep it safe. But Camaro LT's have a sport mode where the backend can get loose with just a squirt of acceleration. Cars like that are insane. It's just not safe to drive cars like that on city street anywhere near their potential.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  > grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them. Yes, the economics have changed. And so has scalability. For today's young adults, vehicle cost and total cost of ownership have made ownership of private vehicles another "shining artifact of the past." [0] But you know what else? Populated cities have dense traffic. Racing with full acceleration to reach the next intersection's red light is obviously futile. People are more worried about having a roof and four walls. [0] to quote L. Cohen
DamnInteresting 1y ago
As a former gearhead, I must say that an EV with get-up-and-go has been worth the tradeoff for me. Sure, I miss the roar of the V8, and the manual shifting. But the instant torque of an EV is so satisfying, and the low center of gravity is fun to toss around. And I don't miss all of the gas station stops, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, fouled sensors, overheating, spark plug changes, clutch replacement, brake pad changes, dripping fluids, fumes, shouted conversations with friends over the engine noise, et cetera.
- bitwize 1y ago
  I remember, years ago, reading on Slashdot about "ampheads" who seemed to have just as much fun playing with performance EVs as my dad did tuning hot rods in 1960s California. I think EVs can be enormously cool, with all the advantages you describe, but most of the commercially available ones are, again, "smartphones on wheels", built for convenience and tethered to the manufacturer. I would love to see more of an enthusiast EV scene build up, maybe involving kit cars with a fully analog drivetrain you can repair with off-the-shelf parts.
  - smileysteve 1y ago
    There are still suspension tuning parts for major ev brands like Tesla. I was at a track day last year in my bmw 3 series and there was a Tesla 3 in my run group in front of me, "lowered" slightly with Eibach springs.
    - tmerc 1y ago
      How many sessions did it last without access to a supercharger?
georgeecollins 1y ago
I understand so completely! I am not old enough for muscle cars, but I liked cars that were big as I was growing up. Like I had an old 944 (loved that) an early WRX, a Mark Vii GTI-- all manuals. I realized my favorite cars were manuals with rear wheel drive. During the pandemic I got a Camaro convertible with a manual. I love that car but it is hard to defend on functional grounds. A Tesla plaid will blow it off on the line. There are a lot of cars that are ten times more functional that are as good or better on the track. I have kids who don't care about cars, took their time getting their driver license. As someone who grew up California I can't understand that. But cars allowed me to do things they can do without cars. And they live in an objectively safer and more stressful world, so I can see why they don't want to add driving to it. Here's what I like about what I drive. It's fun, silly and orange. People look at it and know I like my car but they don't think I am rich dude with a fancy Porsche or Mercedes. All kinds of very pedestrian cars are faster, but I live in Los Angeles and I get to enjoy the weather.
fallous 1y ago
A muscle car is as much a visceral experience as it is a means of transportation, and never under-sell the fun of driving a slow car fast. Modern cars are sensory deprivation chambers that turn the joy of driving into the tedium of transporting oneself from one place to another. We're decades past the time when a 1960s car was remotely competitive on any measurable aspect of performance but, just as rock climbing is not a valid competitor for taking a train/ski lift/whatever to the top of a mountain, there will always be those that revel in the joy of doing something that calls to our more primitive selves. Muscle cars are the essence of being young... they're unreasonable, loud, reckless, and beautiful.
djmips 1y ago
Then you can be an old man gently oiling the steam engine at the museum you volunteer for.
RajT88 1y ago
I'm not a gearhead, but a car admirer. Bought my first fun car recently (a 2001 MR2 Spyder - probably my last fun car). I think we're a long way off self-driving cars in earnest, but we're in the shorter term leaving behind the idea of cars as something where their performance in some way correlates with social status. As hard as you try, you can't deny that element is there for gearheads and tuners - it's writ large across the Fast film franchise.
firecall 1y ago
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this. I view it as much like having an appreciation of Steam Trains and older aircraft! Still interesting and the best are machines worthy of our ongoing attention. FWIW I own an old Porsche 911 and an alarmingly fast EV. I love them both. When I get back in to the old 911, I think to myself, how the bloody hell was this even legal! It feels dangerous and exciting all at the same time. It's an event every time I turn the key and it starts making noises and the gauges spring into life and lights and switches start glowing. Then you turn the key from a cold start and listen to the sound, and you get to know exactly the state of tune. You dont even need to drive it very fast or very far and it makes you feel alive in a way my EV never does! Now when I get in and drive my EV, it works in an astonishingly safe and effective way every time. When you stamp on the accelerator it will immediately rocket forwards in a way that makes the occupants of the car feel sick LOL The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think. But as I say, it's like being a Steam Train enthusiast. They are what they are, from a time when they did what they did.
- m463 1y ago
  > The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think. I think this might be like the yamaha v-max motorcycle. It wasn't as fast as other motorcycles, but the way the throttle opened up at a certain rpm range made the boost seem exciting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost
  - anonymousiam 1y ago
    Ferraris are the same way. They've got an incredible top end that no EV will ever match.
- RatchetWerks 1y ago
  I’ve come to similar conclusions in vehicle choices. Current daily is a fast EV. The next project car I build will be some flavor of an outlaw SWB 911 There is something about it being analog that feels great. I have the same feeling for older Ducatis
bitwize 1y ago
My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance. He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue. I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium. A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps. Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).
lm28469 1y ago
> Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine) No shit... > The average monthly car loan payment in the U.S. is $745 for new vehicles and $521 for used ones > In the first quarter of 2025, the overall average auto loan interest rate was 6.73% for new cars and 11.87% for used cars.
potato3732842 1y ago
>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine) It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever. It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.

ismokedoinks 1y ago

The kids yearn for JDMs

platevoltage 1y ago
Do they? It seems like its the 30/40 somethings that yearned for the JDMs back when we were young, who are the ones still yearning for the JDMs.

PaulHoule 1y ago

Don't forgot to lay some of the blame on trucks, SUVs, and the chicken tax. [1] American car manufacturers aren't interested in making anything that can't be classified as a "light truck" because then they'd have to compete on a level playing field with foreign brands. So every kind of "car" has disappeared. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

twoWhlsGud 1y ago
This. If you are completely surrounded by light trucks as you grow up, then you are much less likely to ever think of actual cars (muscle or otherwise) at all. I grew up around 2000 lbs BMW 2002's (and the like) - a kind of vehicle that simply has vanished. So I could imagine lightweight sport sedans as a thing. If all you know are SUV's your concept of vehicle is going to be very different...
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Auto journalists keep repeating in the same deadpan voice as the brainwashed soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans exclusively want big vehicles. It's not that there isn't some truth in that but the real truth is that (a) the publications won't get any chance to review vehicles if they don't toe the line [1] and (b) since the 1970s if you went to an American car dealer trying to buy a size S car they would try to sell you an L, looking for a size L they would try to sell you an XXL, etc. I remember going to car dealerships with my dad, there was a brief moment after the 2008 financial crisis that this wasn't the case, but by 2015 the major Japanese brands of Honda and Toyota were doing the same. [1] One take on the fall of Intel was that they were "high on their own supply" for the last 15 years and journalists were too intimidated to tell them they were wrong with the exception of Charlie Demerjian
  - wombatpm 1y ago
    But the vehicles today are dumb big. My second car was a 1978 Buick Riviera. 17.5 feet in length, two doors, rear wheel drive, 403cuin 8 cylinder. It weighs in at 3500 lbs, had 15 mph rated bumpers with shocks attached to the frame. Steel roll cage, double steel doors. The car was a beast. You could fit 7 adults in the car and two dead bodies in the trunk. My grandmother was t-boned in it. They straightened the door and replaced the glass and it was good as new. That was a big car! I wish I could buy a car like that with modern antilock brakes, transmission. Instead it’s all trucks and SUVs because people like my mother feel “safer” and like seeing from up high. Look at the specs of a modern vehicle. Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.
    - Bud 1y ago
      A lot of this is true, but also, look at the safety records of those modern vehicles. They protect the driver a LOT better. A totaled car is just a car. Getting paralyzed or killed is a lot harder to fix.
    - kelnos 1y ago
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan make plenty of trucks in the USA, they get around the chicken tax directly. The move to trucks and SUVs seems to be more about consumer sentiment that I can't really understand (I'm a big fan of sedans), it isn't just some hack around the tax system.
- eldaisfish 1y ago
  it is profit for auto makers, not consumer sentiment. larger vehicles have larger price tags and larger profit margins. Remember that the US auto companies spent billions of dollars in marketing and lying to people that they "need" vehicles the size of tanks.
  - murderfs 1y ago
    People want vehicles the size of tanks. Auto companies are spending billions of dollars to get people to buy their respective tank-sized vehicles, not to turn people onto the segment in general.
    - mc32 1y ago
      People with families have been fooling around with larger vehicles for some time: station wagons -> minivans -> SUVs -> CUVs. It's not new.
      - riffraff 1y ago
        Most of the time people drive SUVs alone. I go for walks in the morning and there's a road bottleneck and it's hilarious and sad to see the cars queueing up on both sides, huge ones, with a single person in them, every morning. I do own a station wagon, and it's shorter than most SUVs, and I use it for long trips, but let's be realistic, that's not what most drives are.
        potato3732842 1y ago
        >Most of the time people drive SUVs alone. Most of the time people drive sedans alone. If people bought based purely on passenger need 99% of vehicles on the road should be 2-seat coupes, pickups and vans.

pstuart 1y ago

I think there will always be a desire for the "vroom vroom" factor, as well as the ability to work on it without an EE degree. I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense. I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.

stavros 1y ago
I agree, like there's always been a desire for a well-groomed horse.

hervature 1y ago

> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this. I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.

RatchetWerks 1y ago
You are perfectly correct. I’m morphing love of modifying cars away from performance numbers but into a way to build mechanical art and enjoy emotional moments with other humans. I’ve realized that was the whole point all along. EV or IC it doesn’t matter. Just the statements above

rconti 1y ago

Even outside of EVs, cars have gotten to the point where you're barely driving them anymore, anyway, you're more of a "human in the loop". You can't really see out of them anymore (other than the windshield, of course), so most people have stopped trying and just rely on the "systems". * Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to * Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe * Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent * AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc. Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone. I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.

mingus88 1y ago
And good riddance? Car culture has killed livable cities and I am not going to miss loud and obnoxious cruisers playing games on public roads
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Seriously. I've had more fun on my bicycle than I ever did during my car phase.
  - rconti 1y ago
    Doesn't have to be just a phase, I love both!
    - georgeecollins 1y ago
      Bike rack on my Camaro! But I am fine with car culture passing, it makes sense.
      - 1y ago

Balgair 1y ago

As a former gear head there is also the perception issue. Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them. The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least. Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore. Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)

georgeecollins 1y ago
Another big problem is that performance is so much better than it was in the golden age of muscle cars. Lots of BMWs and Civics today would blow off the fastest car imaginable in '68-70. Of course the latest muscle cars also improved, with engines that are like 400- 1000 hp (really just that Charger, but a teen in my neighborhood has one). That's just really a dangerous amount of power for a daily driver. A lot of electric drivers don't realize how much the potential power is taken down in daily driving to keep it safe. But Camaro LT's have a sport mode where the backend can get loose with just a squirt of acceleration. Cars like that are insane. It's just not safe to drive cars like that on city street anywhere near their potential.
heresie-dabord 1y ago
> grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them. Yes, the economics have changed. And so has scalability. For today's young adults, vehicle cost and total cost of ownership have made ownership of private vehicles another "shining artifact of the past." [0] But you know what else? Populated cities have dense traffic. Racing with full acceleration to reach the next intersection's red light is obviously futile. People are more worried about having a roof and four walls. [0] to quote L. Cohen

DamnInteresting 1y ago

As a former gearhead, I must say that an EV with get-up-and-go has been worth the tradeoff for me. Sure, I miss the roar of the V8, and the manual shifting. But the instant torque of an EV is so satisfying, and the low center of gravity is fun to toss around. And I don't miss all of the gas station stops, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, fouled sensors, overheating, spark plug changes, clutch replacement, brake pad changes, dripping fluids, fumes, shouted conversations with friends over the engine noise, et cetera.

bitwize 1y ago
I remember, years ago, reading on Slashdot about "ampheads" who seemed to have just as much fun playing with performance EVs as my dad did tuning hot rods in 1960s California. I think EVs can be enormously cool, with all the advantages you describe, but most of the commercially available ones are, again, "smartphones on wheels", built for convenience and tethered to the manufacturer. I would love to see more of an enthusiast EV scene build up, maybe involving kit cars with a fully analog drivetrain you can repair with off-the-shelf parts.
- smileysteve 1y ago
  There are still suspension tuning parts for major ev brands like Tesla. I was at a track day last year in my bmw 3 series and there was a Tesla 3 in my run group in front of me, "lowered" slightly with Eibach springs.
  - tmerc 1y ago
    How many sessions did it last without access to a supercharger?

georgeecollins 1y ago

I understand so completely! I am not old enough for muscle cars, but I liked cars that were big as I was growing up. Like I had an old 944 (loved that) an early WRX, a Mark Vii GTI-- all manuals. I realized my favorite cars were manuals with rear wheel drive. During the pandemic I got a Camaro convertible with a manual. I love that car but it is hard to defend on functional grounds. A Tesla plaid will blow it off on the line. There are a lot of cars that are ten times more functional that are as good or better on the track. I have kids who don't care about cars, took their time getting their driver license. As someone who grew up California I can't understand that. But cars allowed me to do things they can do without cars. And they live in an objectively safer and more stressful world, so I can see why they don't want to add driving to it. Here's what I like about what I drive. It's fun, silly and orange. People look at it and know I like my car but they don't think I am rich dude with a fancy Porsche or Mercedes. All kinds of very pedestrian cars are faster, but I live in Los Angeles and I get to enjoy the weather.

fallous 1y ago

A muscle car is as much a visceral experience as it is a means of transportation, and never under-sell the fun of driving a slow car fast. Modern cars are sensory deprivation chambers that turn the joy of driving into the tedium of transporting oneself from one place to another. We're decades past the time when a 1960s car was remotely competitive on any measurable aspect of performance but, just as rock climbing is not a valid competitor for taking a train/ski lift/whatever to the top of a mountain, there will always be those that revel in the joy of doing something that calls to our more primitive selves. Muscle cars are the essence of being young... they're unreasonable, loud, reckless, and beautiful.

djmips 1y ago

Then you can be an old man gently oiling the steam engine at the museum you volunteer for.

RajT88 1y ago

I'm not a gearhead, but a car admirer. Bought my first fun car recently (a 2001 MR2 Spyder - probably my last fun car). I think we're a long way off self-driving cars in earnest, but we're in the shorter term leaving behind the idea of cars as something where their performance in some way correlates with social status. As hard as you try, you can't deny that element is there for gearheads and tuners - it's writ large across the Fast film franchise.

firecall 1y ago

> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this. I view it as much like having an appreciation of Steam Trains and older aircraft! Still interesting and the best are machines worthy of our ongoing attention. FWIW I own an old Porsche 911 and an alarmingly fast EV. I love them both. When I get back in to the old 911, I think to myself, how the bloody hell was this even legal! It feels dangerous and exciting all at the same time. It's an event every time I turn the key and it starts making noises and the gauges spring into life and lights and switches start glowing. Then you turn the key from a cold start and listen to the sound, and you get to know exactly the state of tune. You dont even need to drive it very fast or very far and it makes you feel alive in a way my EV never does! Now when I get in and drive my EV, it works in an astonishingly safe and effective way every time. When you stamp on the accelerator it will immediately rocket forwards in a way that makes the occupants of the car feel sick LOL The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think. But as I say, it's like being a Steam Train enthusiast. They are what they are, from a time when they did what they did.

m463 1y ago
> The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think. I think this might be like the yamaha v-max motorcycle. It wasn't as fast as other motorcycles, but the way the throttle opened up at a certain rpm range made the boost seem exciting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost
- anonymousiam 1y ago
  Ferraris are the same way. They've got an incredible top end that no EV will ever match.
RatchetWerks 1y ago
I’ve come to similar conclusions in vehicle choices. Current daily is a fast EV. The next project car I build will be some flavor of an outlaw SWB 911 There is something about it being analog that feels great. I have the same feeling for older Ducatis

bitwize 1y ago

My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance. He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue. I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium. A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps. Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).

lm28469 1y ago

> Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine) No shit... > The average monthly car loan payment in the U.S. is $745 for new vehicles and $521 for used ones > In the first quarter of 2025, the overall average auto loan interest rate was 6.73% for new cars and 11.87% for used cars.

potato3732842 1y ago

>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine) It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever. It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.