The Next Gen Moral Dilemma
Hi Friends!
Last night, I attended an Italian car and motorcycle-themed get together at The Warehouse in Mesa, Arizona. As always, the selection of cars displayed was excellent, the venue was vibrant and thoroughly picturesque and the crowd was engaged, excited, open and friendly. All in all a fantastic event with Italian Design and Racing acting as the title sponsor.
As is generally the case, conversations around the room bounced from critiques of individual cars, wish lists, discussion of people’s projects currently underway, stuff we “used to have”, etc, but as groups began to combine in the main air conditioned area of the venue (it’s still like 108 here in Arizona) everything started to center around a particular issue that one gentleman (in probably his early ’40s) from the Mercedes AMG Club (of all things at an Italian show) was starting to run into with his kids.
He alluded that his children were beginning to get to the age where they were starting to notice differences between cars and were beginning to develop preferences in what they saw. Overwhelmingly, he said that his children were inspired by electricity. Either electric cars or hybrids with electric propulsion components. He pointed out that one late model Lamborghini in particular, that would be interesting to his eldest child. Not specifically because of the fact that it is what it is, but the fact that it’s got a way to move with an electric engine and then turn on a gas engine later. His dilemma was that he obviously wanted to pass on the significant love that he has for automobiles onto his children, but as is the case with most of us, he finds little to no inspiration in EV transportation.
The question was, should I meet them where they are and support what their tastes are or should I discourage them from going in that direction and then I try to keep them on things that I enjoy only?
For many folks in the group, the answer was pretty simple. As most there started out as Japanese car enthusiasts in the late ’90s or early 2000s, they remembered exactly what this was like. Show up at a car show, get jammed in the corner (or told to come back for the kids portion that may or may not have been taking place later in the evening) and have everyone else at the show thumb their noses at you and downplay your passions. There was a good handful of people that definitely still had a bad taste in their mouth from that kind of experience and for them, it was overwhelmingly important to try and meet these kids where they are.
Also worth mentioning, a couple of weeks ago, I had a handful of comments to this newsletter that expressed how the next generation no longer cares about things like Pebble Beach and Concours level restorations and things of that nature. I also find this to be fundamentally untrue as well and imagery from this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance supports this too. The crowd at that event (including the judges) is clearly getting younger and it’s carrying more prominence with people in the social media age (don’t believe me, check the appropriate hashtags or your favorite automotive content creators on IG or YouTube).
When I was working at the auction house, we oftentimes referenced the Mustang Grande to Shelby GT350 pipeline that was very clearly evident at our sales. Loosely explained, this basically means that somebody that comes in on something cheaper that may be deemed a little bit less desirable is pretty likely to come back in a few years and buy something really cool, so it pays to treat everybody like the most important person in the room. For a lot of enthusiasts my age and of the age of the people that were at the show last night (there was quite a lot of variety here) that largely broke down to JDM to GT3, etc and I think that’s something that we need to take into consideration with this too.
I was fortunate enough to land on the encouragement side of this when I was younger. Sure, I would watch my grandfather scratch his head a little bit when the classic SL that was in the Mercedes shop next to our motorcycle dealership failed to capture my imagination, but the brand new C4 Corvette with its “awesome spaceship dashboard” at the Chevy dealer up the street did. Although he was pretty vocal with his dislike for certain makes and models (he really didn’t like Harley-Davidsons), I can’t ever remember a situation where he downplayed anything that I was interested in and I think that’s a huge reason why I am where I am and why I’ve stuck with this to the degree that I have.
I will be the first to admit, I am not particularly a fan of supercars. I appreciate what they are and what they can do, but they are nowhere as near and dear to my heart as the classics are today. If you look at what I was interested in when I was a kid, you would think that I would be in almost an opposite place moving into the marketplace in which we are currently headed. The point here is, as people learn more things and get more experienced in a hands-on capacity, their interests tend to expand, they move up the existing ladders that are already in place and they tend to appreciate things that maybe they thought they never would.
It’s also worth noting that the playing field is a little bit different here now too. Whereas a few years ago, it was Chevelles and E-types vs Civics and Supras, now it’s an issue of manual transmissions and gas vs batteries and charging stations and that I think underscores the importance of trying to figure out how to get this right.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, you can’t negotiate with the future. Eventually it’s going to be here. How that looks however is up to the decisions that we make today.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge