ever taken the engine out of a 1967 VW Beetle?

It’s often said that today’s teenagers are the first (or maybe second) generation to be worse off than their parents.

And monetarily I would agree.  I paid less than £50,000 for my first house, and my mortgage was only a small percentage of my monthly income.  Yes, I could have bought a larger house, but debt has never been something I’ve been comfortable with.

Whatever, children growing up today will likely never know that feeling and home ownership will reduce as renting increases.  Simply put, increases in income have not kept up with rising commodity prices.  Listen to me; I sound like an economist!

Anyway, there is one area where they are much better off than I was while growing up.  And that is their cars.

My first car was a then 14-year-old VW Beetle made mostly of rust.  It let water in when it rained which then froze solid when it was cold.  The clutch slipped, and the brakes were, well let’s just say hit and miss!  I never knew if it would start in the morning or keep going long enough to get me to where I was going.  It drank petrol at an alarming rate and bits used to fall off it.  I spent more time fixing it than I did driving it.

But it was mine and I loved it dearly.

Today though, a 14-year-old car is likely to be still looking relatively new, not rusting away and (if properly maintained) mechanically reliable and economical.  So much so that you hardly ever see youngsters working on their cars at weekends; fixing niggling little problems or filling holes in the bodywork any more.  They just drive them.

And I think that’s quite sad.  

the 17 year-old me - lock up your daughters, my car's working and I'm coming to town!!

Although I wouldn’t know where to start if something went wrong with my ultra-modern Audi TTS, at least my tinkering days gave me a grounding in mechanics, and I would understand what the mechanic told me.  And, of course, I can fix some things when they stop working.  I don’t think this generation will ever have those skills as they never need to mend or fettle anything.  Stuff just works, and when it does eventually break it gets thrown away and not repaired.

And that’s even sadder.