Oh fuck me, not another one Interest in cars probably did dip a bit about 10-15 years ago, but it's still massive and has gone up again in recent years (though it's probably going to dip again thanks to the government turning against cars in a big way).

The car scene is still massive, it's just changed. Go on Facebook and look at the number of car groups there are. The types of cars people buy has changed to some extent, and the way people buy them has changed, but it's still happening. People are still tuning cars, people still go to car shows, people still drive like dicks. All the stuff that used to go on, still goes on. People are maybe less likely to mess around with old cars, doing engine swaps etc, but can you blame them? Why spend months fitting a different engine into some £500 shitbox, when you can just buy something decent from the off? Modern cars are a thousand times better than the old 80s and 90s stuff, and getting big power is easy, so it's no wonder that's what people are choosing. I'm sure most of us would have done the same if it was available to us in our 20s.

The main difference is in the way the car modifying scene communicates and is perceived. People used to have to buy car mags to get their content or, in the early part of this century, use forums. Now they use Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. That has positives and negatives of course, but it's still going on. I know more people interested in cars and modified cars now than I've known for years.

Speaking of the Ford scene specifically, it's still massive but, like I said, the cars are just different. It's Fiesta and Focus STs that are the most popular now, rather than XR and RS models. The old stuff is now expensive and, compared to the modern models, a bit crap in reality. Most people in their 20s aren't going to be interested in Cosworths because they didn't grow up with them, so they're just old and expensive cars. A Fiesta ST with a few bolt-ons can do 300+bhp, so it's no surprise that that's what they're going for.

The reality is, this forum doesn't really cater for those people, so it probably makes the "community" look much worse than it is. There aren't many modern ST owners here and there aren't likely to be to be honest, especially when so many threads on here end up with people moaning about how it isn't like the "good old days" The car scene is still in rude health, it's just different to how it was 15 years ago, just like it was different 15 years before that, and different again 15 years before that. Times always change.