Quote:
Originally Posted by jmg
It was an honest question. As someone who grew up during the JDM explosion on the mid to late 90's, we were one of the first generations to drool over the Integra Type R, Civic SI, Skylines, etc. The next trend, as I understand it, was the Evo, STI, WRX, Z, S2000 etc. Are the current Type R buyers people of my age who yearned for the Type R in high school and college? Or are they the younger crowd, new college grad age with some coin? My point being this: I was a big JDM fan as a teen. I can easily afford a Civic Type R today, yet I have no desire to. This car should appeal to me for nostalgia's sake. But it doesn't.
|
Thing is, JDM doesn't age well -- and the context of the term has changed dramatically since the late 1980s-early 1990s (I'm a child of that era, too) thanks to the tuner market -- which, I will add, Civics are the prototypical platform for. The fake "R" phenomenon is Exhibit A in that cultural shift.
The 'next-trend' examples you state above are, for the most part, not classic JDM archetypes. Evo/WRX/STi had a rallying component that fueled development -- street racing in them was a secondary phenomenon -- and thus makes those cars attractive to certain types of racing fans that wouldn't be caught dead in, say, an Integra Type R. The S2K was never strongly equated to JDM since its primary competition (Mazda Miata) was never sought after by the JDM crowd and its secondary competition (European roadsters: Z3, Boxster, SLK, TT) were null sets to that crowd.
The current Civic Type R's primary demographic is wealthy young ethnic Asian males, ages 16-30. Sorry if that sounds stereotypical, but stereotypes usually become such because there's a certain amount of truth behind them. Sure, there'll be buyers who don't fall into that category, but that doesn't mean those buyers are a target demographic.