Full disclosure: my rebuild schedule is starting to outlast my patience so some of what I write might simply be commuter car cabin fever coming to a boil.

That said, here it goes: how is the car culture where you are?

I live in Ottawa and, lately, as I either ride the bus for the full office days or drive around the city for days that I'm on the move I feel like I am seeing fewer and fewer young drivers.

And forget about young drivers with modified cars. Off the top of my head I can only think of one Prelude, a Fox Body, and an EK that caught my eye these past few weeks.

Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I go to bed too early these days, but I do wonder if anyone else has noticed a change?

 

I'm surprised to hear that in a city


Out my way there are plenty of young people modifying vehicles, however they are more interested in jacking up pickup trucks than they are tuner street racers.......

Also lets not forget, due to the ridiculous finance options and credit available, people are able to just go buy a brand new car right away. So you get less young people forced into buying used (therefore looking for a car that is cheap but cool) and maintaining them.

 

I live in Richmond where is very common to see a parade of 22 year-olds driving past in Ferraris, Maserati, Lambos. It was tough for my kid at his high school. The best I could do for him was a Ford Probe.





He loved it though.

 

I am here in Ottawa too and at least in the kanata merrivale area its mostly subaru's but i see the odd skyline and other cool stuff.

the tim's/wendys on merrivale and meadowlands has a car get together every friday and you can see some neat stuff there i try to make it out in one of the two cars every Friday.

 

Here in the GTA, things are lob sided. The "tuner" scene has changed dramatically. You either have the people with a ton of cash, or you're scraping by.
The scene isn't what it used to be.

Not to mention a lot of cars produced nowadays can eclipse tuner vehicles right out of the box. Without having to fiddle with them. A lot of people refer to the car as an appliance now. They want it to work all the time, produce monster power, and require little maintenance.

We're a dying breed.

 

It's 90% coal rolling diesels here. I see the odd tuner car, but they are more high end tuner cars, like VW's, BMW M series, AMG Merc's. The cheap end of the tuner cars here in Edmonton Alberta, are Scion FR-Z's, 350Z, etc...

 

The lack of good rotary engine builders out here does not help the situation....

 

ah..the good old days..Wendy's at M&M..

Some guy walked up to me and grabbed a french fry right off my tray..
WTF???!!!!

So I returned the Favor and Grabbed him by the throat and walked him out the door!
Some Kind Lady,..aka Stupid B..called the Cops and I was sort of told that it wasn't ok to do that.
I told them it must be OK to STEAL FOOD Then..hopped in my car and left...after I ate of course.
(true story)

 

The strong turn-out to the Force Fed Sevens Day showed their key role in keeping our rotary scene alive. Many of the over 50 cars at the meet had had recent builds by FF, either by choice or necessity.


The accumulated build experience that was on display shows why they can be considered one of the most experienced shops in the West.

 

Definitely, 7's day was an awesome turnout. You can really tell that ForceFed are an integral part of keeping the scene alive on the West Coast.

 

New Brunswick here. This is what I have noticed:

-We have the older muscle car crowd who don't like anything that's not a muscle car. They have very nice cars but only take them out once a month, on a Sunday, and park them on their lawn for their neighbours to see.
-There are a lot of 16 year olds who braaaaaaa around in their civics or hella stance their VW. Fart cans, stickered up card, and cut springs are normal to see.
-We also have an abundance of coal rollers who drive huge lifted trucks with light bars and smoke stacks. A couple of years ago, when Oil dropped and all the Alberta boys got laid off, they all came back to NB and the roads were clogged with coal rollers. There are still many around.
-Seeing an exotic car or a well kept car, that's not a muscle car, is very rare.

There has been a huge increase of German luxury cars in the past 10 years, ever since a couple of dealerships have opened up. I see a lot of BMWs and Mercs now compared to almost none 10 years ago. These are all driven by ***** or women with purse dogs.

There are zero rotary shops anywhere. There's a small group of enthusiast that share knowledge and keep the cars running.

 

I'm also in NB and have been fortunate to not have engine issues. Having 3 rotary powered cars is great but without the knowledge of other enthusiasts to share knowledge with would make things a challenge.

 

I'm in the west end of the GTA, and drive around quite a bit for work. I do see the odd modified 'tuner' vehicle, but as mentioned by others, it's all about jacking up a pick up or suv these days. I don't quite understand the craze. Quite a few of the modified vehicles in the more 'budget oriented' vehicles seem to be older people. I saw a guy in a late 90's civic that was lowered, had racing stripes, an exhaust that I could probably stick my head into, and who knows what else. That guy must have been in his 60's.

The appliance mentality is also being ingrained into the younger generation, and the unfortunate reality is that we all need reliable vehicles. Newer houses don't have the space to have two cars, let alone three...or four...

On a side note, I pulled up beside a C63 that had been modified with black hood, big wing, and some rims. I looked over and that was an older lady, who was a bit shorter. The light turned from red to green, and she got honked at for her delay in hitting the gas pedal. Well, I guess it wasn't her car, because as she hit the throttle a bit hard in reaction, she was forced into the back rest quite hard. Her facial reaction was absolutely priceless.

 

DJ is your car still for sale? I thought I saw it on Kijiji recently.

Yah to OP you aren't wrong. A lot of my younger cousins (10 years + younger) could care less about cars, driving, owning a vehicle, etc.

They just wanna live in a walkable area, Uber when they can, and spend money on travel and entertainment. If you look at it through that lens, cars did both for us: travel AND entertainment so I don't think the search has changed I just think that new cars are so good out of the box that most people don't care.

 

Wow, this generated a lot more response than I thought it would!

Thank you to everyone for the different points of view. I have to say that after reading some of these responses I've been noticing other vehicles on the road that represent a more modern version of what some of us grew up with; many of which I might have ignored before.

Going through the replies I did start to pick up on a common theme: a sort of split divide between noticing the 'youth see the car as an appliance' and the 'kids in phenomenal machines' perceptions.

I suppose in a lot of ways what is happening to car culture is reflective of what is happening to Canadians at large. I wonder if perhaps we're the shrinking middle class of car enthusiasts?

 

Most of the young people I know (in Toronto) don't own a car and many of them don't know how to drive. I suspect things are different in the more outlying areas, but the majority seem indifferent to cars and car culture.

However, I've gotten many thumbs up, honks, people coming over to talk at the gas station, etc. when I'm driving my FD, so the car love is still out there, it's just not mainstream any more.

 

We often go for evening walks along Spanish Banks, about three miles of beaches near UBC.


Cars can park along the entire length. On average the people enjoying the beaches are young and active.


On this night, we walked the entire length and it was virtually the same line up of cars as in the photo below.


In all, there was one car of interest (a rocket bunny type Porsche convertible - not pictured).

 

It's not just cars, it's everything. Kids these days (I can say that because I'm damn near 40) have an entirely different outlook from a few generations back. A few generations back we played in construction sites, built go-karts, got lost in the woods, broke stuff with our slingshots. Now kids are just as active, but active online. It seems for a large segment of the young population they live via their screens. They are no less social, probably more so, but in a completely different almost isolating way. There seems to be far less interest in the "mechanical" aspect of recreation. And why not? Because the world and all their friends are behind that screen?

It's really been a long time since cars needed to be a hobby. Realistically it has been 20 years since tuneups were a thing. Cars get oil changes, 150KM maintenance (sometimes included with the purchase) and are swapped out when the lease is up or when there is a significant mechanical problem. Treated much more as an appliance.

So multiple generations have grown up without watching their parents work on the car, hear the details of the latest repair, or the rant about how the mechanic is ripping them off. A car is just a thing and not really more interesting than a microwave.

My other long followed hobby is electronics and it is no different. Running what used to be the largest independently run collection of electronic circuits on the Internet I have seen drastic changes over the last 10 years. Not many are taking up what used to be considered hobbyist electronic anymore. People in general aren't building neat little circuits like light chasers, radios and such. Instead they are buying an Arduino, connecting up a bunch of modules (want to drive a relay? There's a $2 Chinese module for that which connects directly to an Arduino) and writing code. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that. I quite like Arduino. But what they don't get are the fundamentals. Why does it work the way it does? HOW to make the equivalent of that $2 relay module by connecting up an opto-isolator, drive transistor, appropriate dropping resistors, kickback diode and relay. They are building cool stuff working at a higher level without understanding of why things work.

Which when looking at the past 20 years, that's how their parents grew up in terms of cars, appliances, computers/Internet.

There are entire generations who can't change their transmission oil (or even know there is a thing called transmission oil) because the transmissions are sealed "lifetime" units. Multiple generations who have never used a modem.

 

Well said, but wait till your my age (60+) and revisit this conversation maybe you'll be a little less forgiving of earlier generations principles or standards of behaviour.

 

In Halifax, we have a reasonably active car culture. Several car clubs, and on Tuesdays, we have a meet. Thursdays, another meet. Sundays, another meet. Plus smaller meets in between.
It seems like there is a bit of a throwback to old '80's/90's Japanese stuff here, tons of RHD cars, and still lots of classics around.

 

Post some pics, eh?

 

This is interesting to see posted, I think our location (Ontario) and how our Canadian prices are just insane are big parts of the decline of car culture, at least around here. I will see the odd fellow enthusiast here and there but... not on a daily basis.

A huge part of the culture is drag racing.. There are absolutely no roads at all for carving corners. unless you wanna spend hours hitting a single corner..........

Let's also not forget that old cars are well, old cars, there is indeed a finite amount of stuff that can exist at this point, winter sucks too for that reason.

JDM culture in southern Ontario where I'm at is almost non-existent.

Also I may fall into the "kid" category I'm 22.

 

Interesting post
Out here on the "Island" there seems to be a collection of all the above.
Still lots of young people working on cars (tuners) and many driving new cars fresh off the lot.
There is a large scene for the hot rod\mussel car crowd and the German car fans are many.
The jacked up modified Diesel trucks are every where as well as some lowered and kitted Diesel cars.
Old school,new school it's all here must be the weather.