Thanks to the Internet and texting, we're seeing a
generation grow up that sees the automobile as something it can
generally do without. Who would have imagined that the personal
computing revolution would lead us here?
NASCAR officials and television network moguls are lamenting the
paradoxical fact that despite the closest and most exciting post-season
championship series in the Chase's 12-year history - with three drivers
separated by just 46 points having the championship within reach going
into the final race - fewer people have been showing up at the tracks
or tuning in to watch on TV.
This is a far cry from half a dozen years ago, when America's
premier motor racing series bragged about being the fastest-growing
spectator sport on the planet.
Several theories have been floated as to why the precipitous falloff
in fan interest. The recession, of course, has played a major role in
the decline, and the fact that Jimmy Johnson, who must be credited as
one of the great driving talents in NASCAR history, had won
back-to-back Chase championships four years in a row and was favored
among the three drivers with the championship within reach entering the
November 23 Chase finale.
The oddsmakers were right. Johnson pulled out an unprecedented fifth
championship in a row with his second-place finish in the Ford 400 at
Homestead, Florida, an outcome that must've elicited a loud chorus of
groans from NASCAR's promoters and TV network execs.
Nothing Stock About NASCAR
Those factors have almost certainly contributed to NASCAR's
contretemps, but as an auto racing aficionado for nearly 50 years, I
have some additional theories. First, the cars have become much less
interesting for technology-oriented fans like me. The first-ever NASCAR
race that registered in my consciousness was won by an up-and-coming
young driver named Richard Petty, driving a 1963 Plymouth Fury that had
originally rolled off a Chrysler assembly line, a race car that - other
than the numbers painted on and roll cage welded in - was the spitting
image of similar models many fans would've driven to the races. In
those days, NASCAR racers truly were "stock cars" and racing directly
related to what you could buy in dealer showrooms. However, by the late
1980s, NASCAR stockers, so-called, had pretty much morphed into
silhouette racers, with virtually no substantive or even aesthetic
resemblance to cars a race fan could buy for a daily driver.
Then three years ago, NASCAR imposed its "Car Of Tomorrow",
completing the transformation of competing cars into pure spec-racers
with a central steering station - the only vestiges distinguishing a
"Chevy" from a "Ford" from a "Toyota" are faux radiator grille and
headlamp decals pasted on the front of blobby, cookie-cutter, COT
fiberglass body shells. Small wonder individual cars are more commonly
referred to merely by their numbers these days, since distinctions
among among purported brand nameplates are pure marketing hype.
With no credible crossover between actual consumer products of the
various participating manufacturers left, at least ones that have any
real relevance to the auto-buying public other than fandom and
partisanship, NASCAR has degenerated more and more into being a cult of
celebrity, a major focus being rivalries and feuds (whether real or
contrived) among the drivers, leaving little to attract real car
people. In its present status, NASCAR has been unflatteringly described
as "professional wrestling on wheels," and there's more than a little
truth in that assessment.
My suggestion for NASCAR would be a return to its roots as a race
series based on actual stock cars that people can buy at local
dealerships, albeit with considerable latitude for performance
modifications and, of course, for driver safety, but with real stock
model sheet metal and no proportional distortions, and front wheel
drive if that's what the consumer is offered. Racing might then return
to its erstwhile rationale of improving the breed.
However, aside from boring cars, another major factor's in play
likely contributing to NASCAR's popularity decline. Last summer, the
Washington Post reported that only about 30% of 16-year-olds
today even bother to get driver's licenses - US teen license-holders
peaked at 12 million in 1978, when late Baby Boomers were also in their
late teens, and now number fewer than 10 million.*
A Rite of Passage
When I was 16, getting one's license was a virtually universal rite
of passage. I took my driving test six days after I turned 16, and few
of my friends waited much longer. In those days, virtually every other
male teenager I knew was a car fan, or at least pretended to be one.
Anyone who wasn't or didn't risked being regarded as a bit odd - not
necessarily ostracized, but definitely self-excluded from much of the
conversation, in those days conducted face-to-face (often in cars while
cruising or parked on the strip) or by landline telephone, and
centering largely on two topics - cars and girls (in no particular
order). Most of our social life was conducted while cruising in, parked
in, in, or otherwise around cars.
If you've ever seen George Lucas's 1973 flick American
Graffiti - which received a Best Picture Academy Award
nomination and which the US Library of Congress has declared culturally
significant and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
- it provides a dramatized but commendably accurate depiction of teen
car and cruising culture in the 1960s. If you've never seen it, and
especially if you're under 30, I encourage you to rent a copy. It'll
help you understand what I'm talking about.
The Carless Generation
Today most young people live in urban environments and learn to live
without cars, conducting their social lives on the Internet and via
smartphones. The "greenwashing" kids these days are universally
subjected to in the education systems also indubitably creates an
element of anti-car peer pressure among young people, although
The Truth About Cars website editor and publisher Edward
Niedermeyer - a self-professed car nut who discusses automobiles seven
days a week, but doesn't own a car - suggests that that's usually more
of an after-the-fact justification for carlessness than a first
principle.
The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown observes that most young
people live in urban society today and learn to live without cars,
conducting their social lives on the Internet and smartphones, not in
cars.
Niedermeyer notes that over the past century or so, America's youth
have gravitated toward the automobile as a vehicle (both actually and
metaphorically) of personal freedom, "an escape pod from the world of
adult responsibilities and a way to connect with other young people."
However, he observes that for today's carless generations, dominant
values have been stood on their proverbial heads. There's even a
semi-organized car-free
movement in North America, sort of like ethical vegetarianism.
Niedermeyer observes:
"If a young person does buy a car, it's almost always
because they need it for their job. Though debt, insurance,
maintenance, and speeding tickets are the real-life downsides of auto
ownership, the crucial issue in the uncooling of cars is the image of
car ownership as a complex of obligations, all of which add up to less
freedom. The ascendancy of the Internet clearly played a role in this
dynamic as well. Thanks to computers, Internet, and cell phones, kids
are more connected to each other and the world around them than ever
before . . . the younger generations boast gearheads who can
go toe-to-toe with any of the last 50 years. But they're an
increasingly marginalized crowd. Cars have largely lost their masculine
mystique, making cars which rely on an appeal to manliness seem
outdated, desperate and, well, old-fashioned."
Holdouts in an Internet World
Too true, although there are indeed some holdouts in the under-30
(or is it 40?) crowd, and reportedly still some vitality in youth
car-culture here and there - in California, for example. One of my
daughters is a consummate car-freak and hotrodder, although she would
vigorously protest that "manliness" doesn't have to be part of the
equation. She can more than hold her own in any serious conversation
among gearheads.
However, my other daughter, an academic now in her mid/late 20s, has
never even bothered to take her driver's test. With few exceptions,
real car people I know are grizzled and gray-bearded middle-aged
boomers like me (or older). Not an auspicious outlook for the future of
hotrodding or NASCAR, unless they - and the car culture community in
general - can find a way to make themselves relevant and attractive
again to a critical mass of younger fans.
Frankly, I feel sorry for the kids. I like computers and work on the
Internet, but there's no way I would swap a youth spent immersed in the
real world of car culture for the virtual world of texting, tweeting,
and Facebook social networking.
Or as forum poster "boilerman10"
commented on the Daily Kos, the Gen. Ys have never heard the roar
of a type 1 Hemi DeSoto or Chrysler pre-1958, never heard or saw a
flathead Ford super-modified doing over 130 miles per hour on a half
mile track and then backing down for the curve and reaccelerating.
"That sound is incredible...." Gen. Y "never saw how Chevrolet
revolutionized hot rodding with the 283 and 327 engines. I am so glad I
lived during that time. Poor Gen. Y."
I agree. It's sad, and it makes me appreciate all the more how good
we had it.
