Confession #42: If others' first impressions are anything to go on, some things are still worth the wait

2013 Subaru BRZ (AutoViva photo)

I swear, I'm not turning into some hyper-critic of automotive journalists. I may have just railed on Consumer Reports and their apparent lack of any understanding of impulse buying in their reviews, but I will largely save media criticism for my other blog.

This isn't so much criticism as an observation. Perhaps the most drawn-out coverage among auto journalists in recent memory is the Toyota-Subaru sports coupe collaboration, just now bearing fruit as the Subaru BRZ, Scion FR-S and its Toyota-branded equivalent. A lot of acronyms, but really one rear-wheel drive, compact sports coupe with a boxer four-pot and aimed at sports car purists who value great handling characteristics over modern electronic driver intervention and a heavily boosted engine. What's more, this speaks to the core of an auto journalist's heart. These are cars that just aren't as common on auto show stands, things with four cylinders, three pedals and a price that begins with a 2. I'm starting to picture hoards of drivers slobbering like Labradors at the press launch. 

Confession #19: Most people my age couldn't care less about cars

I’ve known something was wrong for a few years now. I felt like a car addiction was something to be closeted because people would start squirming away from me.

And if I met “Mad Men’s” Vincent Kartheiser in a bar and started talking to him about turbochargers and Mercedes’ new AMG models, his eyes might roll back into his skull.

This means I wasn’t at all surprised by a recent report suggesting my generation, the Millennials – those born roughly between 1980 and 1995 – have dwindling interest in the car.

For automakers, especially the Detroit Three, this is damning information. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler already lost the Millenials’ parents, the Baby Boomers, to European and Japanese carmakers and that’s where they’ve stayed for the most part.