Your idea of ‘grandpa cars’ may be all backwards

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If you hadn’t heard yet, Millennials and Generation Z have not given up on car ownership, at least not to the extent doom-sayers were predicting a decade ago. Heck, there are surveys out there that suggest Gen Z is more interested in classic cars than Baby Boomers are. But the caveat is that the definition of “classic car” has changed as the years have rolled on, with rides from the ’80s and ’90s now qualifying in many enthusiasts’ opinions; and indeed it’s these cars that seem to be getting most of the limelight at auctions, car shows, and in popular media these days.

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The cars once thought of as proper “classics” – the V8-powered muscle cars of the ’70s, the “shoebox” Chevies of 1955 through 1957, heck, the nearly-century-old Ford Model A and the thousands of hot rods built off its chassis – now occupy something of an even older echelon of vehicles in the cultural zeitgeist. You might hear them referred to (often in a derogatory sense) as “Boomer” cars—classics, sure, but ones you’d most likely find parked in your grandpa’s or grandma’s garage rather than that of your typical under-50 enthusiast.

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And you wouldn’t be wrong. These kinds of cars are generally still largely owned by the Baby Boomer contingent. But here’s the catch—Millennials dig them, too, at least to an extent.

That wouldn’t surprise you if you checked out our list of the classic cars Millennials are most interested in insuring from eight months ago, based on data (calls for quotes) we were supplied by the world’s largest classic-car insurer, Hagerty. Fully six of the top 10 vehicles on that list were American models from the ’60s and ’70s (though, full disclosure, two of those six were pickup trucks). It’s clear Boomers and Gen Xers have passed on their love of muscle cars and Corvettes to their successor cohort—heck, a heap of old Mustangs made the Gen Z top-10 list, too.

I was curious about some of the other stereotypical “grandpa cars” named above – specifically ’50s Americana and the Model A; your Millennial author owned a ’29 Ford coupe a few years back – and asked Hagerty if they could drill down into their data. In reply, John Wiley, the company’s Director for Valuation Analytics, told me those models are way more popular among Millennial car enthusiasts than you might assume.

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Wiley added context by using the third-generation 1994 through 2001 Acura (Honda) Integra as a benchmark; the Japanese sport compact is an absolute favourite among Millennials, one that’s exploded in collectability over the past few years. When we asked Hagerty to list the cars that Millennials requested quotes for and that Boomers basically ignored, the Integra came out on top. Art Cervantes, Director and Founder of the world’s largest ’80s- and ’90s-focused car shows, RADwood, said the Integra was the fourth most-common car at his events, noting he’ll get on average three Integra Type R examples at any given RADwood meet-up.

How do the cars we think of as Boomer-mobiles compare to the ‘Teg? “Millennials are about as likely to quote a 1955-1957 Ford Fairlane as they are a 1994-2001 [Acura] Integra with Hagerty,” Wiley said. “They’re about five times more likely to quote a 1955-1957 Chevrolet Bel Air as the Integra.” Well, damn. Surely enthusiasts born after 1980 are a lot more interested in the Acura than the A, though, right? Nah. Hagerty fields four times as many calls from Millennials for a ’28 through ’31 Ford than they do for those ’90s Integras, per Wiley.

There’s a couple of ways to look at that data, of course. We have to start by considering the sheer number of these cars on the market, as the Model A’s five-million-car production run, and the Tri-Five Chevrolet’s 4.8-million-car run, mean you’re going to get a lot of Millennials shopping one just because there are still so many out there, even if more than half have rusted away. The third-gen Integra, by contrast, saw sales of about 350,000 units across its seven-year lifespan, so they’re bound to come up for sale less often.

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Pricing plays a role, too, as cash-strapped Millennials may simply be unable to afford the more-expensive Acuras they’d prefer. We’re going to put a pin in that one, though: the gap between the average value of a Model A and an Integra is not all that wide, a difference of about US$5,000, per Classic.com. And a ’50s Chev is liable to be nearly double the cost of a ’Teg.

Finally, we have to consider that maybe Millennials are simply shopping their Integra quotes at insurers besides Hagerty, perhaps unaware their ’90s Japanese car qualifies for a policy there and artificially lowering our Millennial-interest data-point. Well, that one we’re also a little wary of, as Hagerty’s data seems to suggest thousands of enthusiasts of all ages regularly turn to Hagerty to insure all kinds of models from the ’80s through to the present (check our various linked-to lists above to see what I mean).

Maybe it’s simply that ’50s Fords, Tri-Five Chevs, and ol’ Model As have an enduring appeal that even Millennials can’t ignore. The caveat there is that Wiley noted “Gen Z isn’t quite as interested (yet) in those vehicles as Millennials are.”

So what exactly does count for a “grandpa car” these days?

Well, you could look at our Hagerty-data-derived list of cars that older enthusiasts clamour for and that young car-nuts ignore, a run-down based on the difference in the number of quotes on a model requested by generation. The trend there seemed to be that Boomers absolutely can’t get enough European roadsters from the ’90s and back – the Triumph TR4, the Alfa Romeo Spider – while Millennials shrug at the lot of them. None-too-plump pockets are apparently keeping the less-aged away from high-dollar hot rods like the ’65 Shelby Mustang GT350, too, even if base-model Mustangs are a Millennial favourite.

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Combine steep pricing and Continental-drop-top flair and you get a car the younger set can’t afford but doesn’t want even if they could anyway—the Jaguar E-Type.

Millennials are about four times more likely to (request a Hagerty insurance quote for) a 1928-1931 Ford Model A than a (1994-2001) Acura Integra

John Wiley, Hagerty Director for Valuation Analytics

About five years ago, when we’d last run up all this generational-demographic Hagerty data, the other takeaway was that Boomers really seemed to favour retro-styled modern cars like the 2005-era Ford Thunderbird reboot and the ’40s-inspired Chevrolet SSR pickup, models Millennials failed to feel any “displaced nostalgia” for. Those are probably still safe bets, too, even if they’ve fallen just outside of the top-10 of our 2024 list.

But besides A-bombs and finned Chevs, I’d also asked Riley about another segment of traditionally grandpa-esque cars and their relative popularity among Millennials: luxury cars of the ’60s and, perhaps even moreso, the ’70s. Despite four-figure bargain-basement prices for driver-quality examples, old “land yachts” lamentably aren’t often spied with younger drivers behind the wheel. I was still taken aback when Riley dropped this comparison: “Millennials are about twice as likely to call Hagerty about a Ford Model A as they are about a 1971-1978 Cadillac Eldorado.”

Now some quick math does reveal that makes said Caddy a little more popular than a ’55 Ford on the Integra scale, but, yeah, nowhere close to the Tri-Five or A-bone.

Mulling it over, though, it makes sense: unlike any of the other models mentioned above, these cars came with a substantial sticker price attached when new, and their style tended toward the conservative—together that means a hefty proportion of literal grandpas and grandmas made up the buying demographic for the Lincolns and Imperials in the Disco Era. That cache is hard to shake, and the population of 20- and 30-somethings drawn to the button-tuft brocade-interior luxo-barges of their parents’ parents is rather niche.

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But – yes, one more “but,” I know this column’s been full of ’em – that’s not to say that niche is non-existent. Hagerty data on various models that fall under this umbrella suggests that while they may not be Model-A-popular among Millennials, classic luxury cars from the mid-’60s through the ’80s are still showing some appeal among younger enthusiasts. (That again includes Yours Truly.) Preliminary numbers suggest that interest runs even broader among Generation Z, implying a new faction of faux-wood fanatics is still coming up.

All of this is to say defining a “grandpa car” is a really rather complicated affair, and, to be honest, one that’s probably most fervently debated by “armchair enthusiasts” more than anyone else. (Guilty.) But it’s clear that if you’ve been writing off muscle cars, Model As, and shoebox Chevs as machines only Boomers buy, you might just have this whole thing backwards.

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