The Virtual Reality
Hi Friends!
Recently, I was invited to do something really unique and cool. For those who aren’t familiar, Career-View Mirror is a UK based podcast that highlights automotive industry leaders and rising stars from all across the globe, in a long form, biographical, conversation type format. This week, Host Andy Follows guided me through mine.
This was a really interesting experience and I touched on a lot of stuff that I don’t normally talk about, like early substance abuse issues, the difficulties of trying to escape the music business, how I somewhat randomly stumbled into classic cars and what the consequences were for making so many drastic changes so quickly after I did. It was something really new for me and it’s definitely something I’ve never done before.
Although my story is not typical for this industry (which Andy attested to after we recorded), the origin of my interest in cars most definitely is. At the beginning of all of this stuff, I had people close to me, that I looked up to that encouraged it. I had an uncle and a grandfather that were constantly giving me model cars, car magazines and taking me places and exposing me to cool, interesting things on wheels on a really regular basis. I’m betting that nearly everybody who’s reading this right now probably had somebody in their lives that provided a similar experience too.
Last night, while at the grocery store in preparation for my weekly 2:00 AM Italian food stravaganza culinaria (if you follow me on Instagram you know…) something kind of dawned on me. At my local Fry’s/Kroger marketplace, there’s at least two or three end caps that reside in prominent locations that are stocked with nothing but Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. Nearly every time that I am there, I dig through the current offerings at least a little bit in search of an Alfa Romeo, Shelby, Yenko or Jaguar model that I may not have. I also realized, that I almost never see kids looking at these things. It’s almost always dudes by themselves in their 20s and up. Obviously, with the real estate that these things take up, they are selling them and it’s not to say that these guys aren’t giving these to kids, but I found this kind of interesting.
While standing at the checkout, I noticed something else. There was a woman in line in front of me with two elementary school aged boys. They both had electronic devices that they were glued to and it appeared they were both playing some kind of racing game.
Over the last decade or so, I think enthusiasts and industry professionals alike have done a pretty good job of coming up with ways to try to expose their cars to younger generations. What I’m wondering however, is how good of a job are we really doing of meeting these kids where they are and on the things they are interested in? Of course, real world experiences (car shows, drives, working on a car or a motorcycle with significant adult) will always have the greatest impact. This said, I think it begins before this.
It’s an undeniable fact that video games have become extraordinarily important to this hobby and this industry. You see it referenced in auction company marketing and with prominent dealers (for example, the DS Legends Collection from DriverSource on BAT was completely focused in this direction) and the skyrocketing value of prominent JDM cars, that most people on this side of the planet have never even seen in person, can almost all, at least in some capacity be contributed to this too. If we’re seeing the impact that video games have on current collectors, imagine what they’re doing for future ones.
I (as well as many others) have had a theory for quite a while that video games are the new matchbox cars and car magazines and if you really want to inspire somebody at the entry point, that’s maybe how we have to do it. I’ll be the first to admit. I could care less about playing video games (even though we made one). I don’t have the time and my real life is more interesting than most games are anyway. However, I’m also willing to admit that maybe this is something worth rethinking as well.
If you’d like to check out my episode of Career-View Mirror, you can do it HERE.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge
