Jack Price joined the Marines in fall 2021 knowing he would need a car to get around base and that he couldn’t afford a new one. A joyless, month-long search through dealer classifieds and Facebook Marketplace listings ended when his mother spotted a 2010 Volkswagen Jetta posted on her office listserv by a co-worker moving abroad. With just 60,000 miles (96,560km) on themeter, the car (a manual!) was mechanically sound, and the air conditioning, sunroof and Bluetooth radio worked too.
At $6,000, it was a steal. Five years on, the Jetta, which he called the Pewter Pebble, is still carting him from A to B in unassuming style. I get so much crap from people, but not people my age.” For generations, buying a first new car has been a rite of passage in the US, the clearest sign of a young person responsibly striking out on their own.
But younger millennials and gen Z are increasingly finding that path blocked. The average new vehicle costs more than $50,000, an alarming figure that reflects Americans’ insatiable appetite for progressively larger SUVs and pickups. Meanwhile, adults under 35 are disappearing from showroom floors, accounting for less than 10% of new vehicle registrations in 2024 – a new low.
According to the credit reporting agency Experian, the average monthly car payment in the US is $765 for a new car and $542 for a used one, with the loan terms now stretching to six, even seven, years. A record 21% of new-car buyers pay $1,000 or more a month, according to the autos research group Edmunds. And that’s before factoring in maintenance, fluctuating gas prices and the eye-watering insurance premiums often charged to drivers under 35.
For many young Americans already under the strain of student loans, high housing costs and an unforgiving labor market, buying a new car or even a newer used one is out of the question. Enter the Y2K car – the retro ride that has become a trendy romantic choice for some younger Americans. They are the ones that simply won’t die.
Think wedge-shaped Honda Accords and slab-sided Toyota Camrys: dependable, hand-me-down transport that can last 150,000 miles or more with routine maintenance. (Price’s Jetta, which was built at the end of a model production run that began in 2005, just makes the cut.) They’re economical to run and relatively inexpensive to insure, owing to their drastically lower worth. Best of all, the purchase price is low enough to pay in cash. Even when buyers need a loan – at steep interest rates as modern cars have in effect become mortgage payments on wheels – they can pay it off in a fraction of the time it takes to finance a newer car.
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