Article content We know, we know—the ol’ “youth don’t care about cars any more!” bunkum has been shot down repeatedly over the past decade, as survey after survey eventually revealed it wasn’t a lack of interest that was keeping Millennials from vehicle ownership, but simply a lack of funds. Well, new data out of classic-car insurer Hagerty suggests that the-kids-are-all-right enthusiasm for vintage vehicles is being picked up by the Generation Z-ers that have succeeded the Millennials—with the headline statistic suggesting Gen Z might be even more interested in classic cars than Baby Boomers. Now, there are a few caveats, here: first of all, the numbers being crunched are based on a single survey of just over 2,000 Americans conducted for Hagerty by research firm OnePoll (Talker Research).
Yeah, we agree: that’s not a whole lot of respondents. Second, as the decades have rolled on, the definition of “classic car” has changed, too. Last we checked – about five years ago, in 2019 – many Millennials were interested in stalwart classics like the first-gen Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, yes .
But the newest data unsurprisingly shows there’s even greater enthusiasm among that cohort and their Gen Z successors in cars built in the ’80s and ’90s. That said, on to the new survey data: yes, Generation Z shows a “strong and growing interest in collector cars,” reads Hagerty’s press release. “While nearly half (47%) of the respondents surveyed noted an interest in owning a classic car, Gen Z expressed significantly greater interest at 60%, compared to 31% of Baby Boomers.
” Drilling down, Hagerty reports more than three-quarters (77%) of Gen Z respondents said they liked or even loved driving, and 32% either have owned or currently own a classic car. That number puts kids born between 1997 and 2012 ahead of even Millennial enthusiasts, as only 30% of them could say the same re: classic-car ownership. Millennials, however, were more likely than any other generation to do their own repairs on their cars, if you can believe the 34% of them that checked off the “I fix my own stuff” box on the survey.
The survey also backed up what Hagerty itself has seen via its favourite metric, number of prospective customers calling for an insurance quote: the new body of classics that enthusiasts across all generations are most interested in is vintage sport-utility vehicles. Some 38% of respondents generally said they were most keen on a classic SUV, but Gen Zers were apparently less so—just 26% of them put down “SUV” as their fave segment of the hobby, barely ahead of the 23% that “classic luxury car” netted. Breaking that down into particular fave makes and models might be worth its own article, but suffice it to say when Hagerty fields a call from a Gen Z enthusiast looking to insure a classic, more often than not it’s a first-gen (NA) Mazda MX-5 Miata roadster .
Millennials, meanwhile, have apparently developed a taste for the GMT400 Series trucks from Chevrolet and GMC, a generation of pickup spanning from 1988 to 2000. Yes, we’d also like to see a larger sample size for a survey like this, but the fact it seems to concur with the hard data Hagerty’s collected in the form of insurance policies inquired about and taken out by Millennials and Gen Zers suggests maybe its results are pretty solid anyway. In any case, it’s reassuring to hear, once again, that even if older generations likely have the most money tied up in this hobby so many of us love, they’re not the only ones keeping classic-car culture alive and well—no cap.
Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on X , Tiktok and LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice..
