Worse still, an amount of young people aren't even interested in driving nowadays. And yeah, with the cost of everything nowadays, I can't blame young people for getting cars with pathetic sized wheezy motors as that's all they can afford including insurance and fuel etc. No wonder they aren't that interested in driving when the reality is something boring and rubbish.
And driving itself is getting less enjoyable; more traffic, lower driving standards, more aggression, the increased chance of accumulating some points due to some unforeseen unthinking camera trap, worse road conditions...
But then, hey, 'pathetic weezy sized motors' aren't all bad. My little Suzuki hatch has just a naturally aspirated 1.6-litre engine... and it'll do 0-60mph in the same time as that aforementioned 383 '70 Challenger R/T, heh – and it can also punch out north of 40mpg to a tank, which was certainly something my '68 Charger could never do. And it would certainly run rings around either Dodge on a track.
Okay, so
some a lot of that is to do with the fact that it weighs just over a tonne, but still...
Different strokes for different folks – all that matters is that they're enjoying it. As you say, cost probits many from looking at much else, these days. And owning something you can actually drive and not worry about is much more gratifying than owning something potentially finickity that's too expensive to have fun with.