A question asked in numerous stories a week ago was put best in a headline at the Atlantic: “Why Don’t Young Americans Buy Cars?” A year or so ago, of course, the question was why young people don’t read a newspaper; and before that it was something else young people don’t do that we seem to expect them to. While it’s been a great while since I sat inside dealerships to see exactly what the demographical makeup of their buyers was in any given month, it was fairly obvious decades ago that the makeup of car buyers was changing dramatically.
The Atlantic story gave out a few important facts, including that only half of kids 19 or younger now hold a driver’s license, down from “nearly two-thirds in 1998.” Following that statistic the magazine covered CNW Marketing Research’s study, which showed that young adults “between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America.” And that was down by 11 percentage points from 1985.
The Automotive News, in a similar story, pointed out that in 1983 fully 94 percent of persons in their 20s held a driver’s license as compared to just 84 percent today.y