[GriffJ]

I'm at the very tail end of Generation X(1980). I had a couple ls1 fourth gens and a 04 GTO in the late 90's and early 2000's. There was a pretty decent young guy car scene during that time here in Austin. My son was born in 2006 and sold my GTO for a SUV. He requires no special seating now so I went back to a muscle car. I was actually surprised after looking at the Austin meetup thread and seeing that it was basically dead. We use to have 40+ cars every weekend in ~2003.

I think there are a few reasons why the younger crowd is less interested.

1. Access to social media/gadgets as mentioned earlier in the thread. These things eat up free time like crazy.

2. Money. Young adults are coming out of college with 80-100k in debt with no real guarantee of a job. A lot of the younger crowd that does drive higher end cars are geeks that have money. They seem to be split between driving the latest battery powered econobox or a performance vehicle.

3. Cost of cars. I bought my low option Z28s for less than 22K new. A V8 now is pushing 35k. Wages haven't increased enough for most people to handle the price increases. The insurance for early 20 year old male on a V8 was insane(I paid 2K+ year) and I would imagine it is even worse now.

4. Urbanization. Another one mentioned earlier in the thread. The 20 somethings with any money all want to live in the middle of downtown here in Austin.

5. Diesel trucks. You rarely saw a modded truck 15 years ago. Now you can't look up without seeing somebody driving a 700HP diesel truck. I think this fad took a lot of the guys who would be driving a muscle car.