Joey D
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I didn't say they weren't younger people interested in them, but it's nowhere near the level it was 15-20 years ago. I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the US, if you find a teenager who's into Japanese cars, they're typically only talking about a Supra or a GT-R. Back in the day, we had 17-year-old dudes building their mom's hand-me-down Honda Civic into something that would impress girls in a Best Buy parking lot at midnight using a bunch of rusty tools, a poorly written forum post, and an endless supply of Red Bull (Monster wasn't popular yet). They'd memorize Sport Compact Car articles, try to outdo each other on obscure JDM knowledge, and think Gran Turismo was peak because it showed cool cars America wouldn't understand (even though everyone already knew about them from Fast and the Furious).
Gen Z largely got priced out of this, and thus interest waned. Also, cars got way more complicated, which didn't help either. You no longer had 17-year-olds getting into Japanese car culture because it was no longer interesting to many of them. The ones that remained interested shifted their focus away from cars with wild paint jobs, loud exhausts, and huge sound systems and got into "clean" looking cars that are lowered on expensive wheels. You don't have many people going crazy with visual modifications like there once was. I'm not saying this is bad; I get it, fads change and evolve.
Gen Alpha is probably going to be more into JDM cars since their parents are Millennials, and Millennials are the ones buying up the 90s-era JDM cars like their parents bought up 70s-era muscle cars so they can roll them out to "meets" with other overweight, burnt-out, Millennial dads who are pushing 40 but want to feel 18 again.
And I think the Fast and the Furious merch is being bought up by those same 30- 40-year-old dads who claim it's for their son, but it's really for their desk (I'm not pointing the finger at myself at all, nope, not even a little bit...proceeds to hide the several hundred dollars worth of Fast and Furious merch in my office).
