What Kids Want.(car models)

Byline: Rich Ceppos

Ah, the search for youth eternal. So ravenously pursued. So prized. So elusive. And so we jog. We low-fat diet. We Jazzersize. Vitaminize. Aroma-therapize. We go herbal, go veggie. TaeBo. Botox. Viagra, anyone? But oh, wherefore the magic fountain? Hey, wake up and smell the chamomile tea!

Carmakers feel the pain, too. Maybe not your pain, but an ache clearly associated with a loss of youthfulness. They want young buyers. Always have, actually. They want their products to be ``youthful.'' No change there, either. After all, you can sell an old man a young man's car, the saying goes, but you can't sell a young man an old man's car.

I wonder nonetheless: Will any carmaker ever truly figure out what young people want? History does not have a kind answer to that question. Because after more than a century of both building cars and probing the psychological recessesof consumers' craniums, carmakers can't seem to crack the frequency with any, uh, frequency.

Pick your generation-the Greatest (depression kids who served in World War II), the Boomers (the kids of the Greatest) or the Millennials (kids of Boomers). They're wildly different in their automotive predilections. But what they have in common is always deciding for themselves what's hot and what's not. Marketing, schmarketing.

Young people's vehicles of choice have universally been both cheap and used. And then the enthusiasts among them modify and personalize their cars' looks and performance as they can afford to. Sometimes that involves an inordinate amount of money; in the case of some kids, all of their money. Conspicuous by its absence through all this has been any significant car-company involvement behind the scenes or in front.

To wit: Post-World War II hot rodding was born of kids souping-up cheap, flathead-V8 1930s Fords-little ...