I drew the F40 and the Porsche 959 so many times as a kid. And always terribly.
I wonder if kids today get fascinated by cars these days like a bunch of us got back in the 80s with cars like the F40, the 959, the Testarossa or the Countach. And if so, what are those cars.
Part of what made objects like this back then so fascinating is how difficult it was to retrieve any information about them. You had to buy a magazine, or you'd see specs in a trading card game, or you had a little model.
Today you can just look up a YouTube video of the full tour and not much is left for the imagination.
Very true, I still remember the thrill of seeing new exotic cars in Top Trumps card games, but having no way of finding more information about them at the time. 40 years later I can look them up instantly.
Many young people today seem to have a similar superficial knowledge of cars from computer games, but oddly little depth of knowledge about them other than their in-game dynamics.
> I drew the F40 and the Porsche 959 so many times as a kid. And always terribly.
As a kid on my Atari 600 XL I realized by myself that I could buy graph paper / grid paper / coordinate paper at a shop near my house and came up with the idea to use a "glass" table (a table where the top is made of glass) and a lamp underneath the table, to then note the coordinates of the Porsche 959. I took a picture from a 959 from one of the car magazine I found and meticulously wrote down the coordinates of the most important lines of the car so that I could then encode the coords on the Atari 600 XL.
I kept this graph paper with the 959 for a super long time and I'm so sad I eventually threw it away.
I'd do this kind of things while I was on vacation, far from my computer.
There are many cars to get excited about, with outrageous visual and engineering designs. Materials science and drive train development is staggering.
An off-the-top of my head (recency biased) selection:
GMA T.50, Aston Martin Valkyrie, AMG One, McLaren Solus, McMurtry Speírling, Pagani Utopia, Koenigsegg Jesko.
It's not the same as the 80's, the birth of the supercar and the fight for supercar supremacy, but it's still fascinating and just as out-of-reach as it was when I was drawing F40s as a kid.
Lots of 20 somethings are dreaming about old Nissan GTRs, 1960s mustangs, Toyota Supras and so on.
Car culture is alive and well, but it isn't all dreaming about Lambos and Porsches. It is more nuanced and creative, with modified cars as an art form living a strong life.
I'm pretty sure they still do. Today's super- and hypercars are still very much special. It's not like the F40 or Countach were ever everyday cars.
Look at McLaren, Koenigsegg, Pagani. But also Ferrari and Lamborghini still.
To be honest I wonder if kids follow them more than adults. It may be similar to dinosaurs, where peak knowledge and interest happens at around 8 years old.
I wonder if kids today get fascinated by cars these days like a bunch of us got back in the 80s with cars like the F40, the 959, the Testarossa or the Countach. And if so, what are those cars.