A parallel development is the dying out of the teenage car culture, which went hand-in-hand with guitars and rock ‘n’ roll. Modern computer technology doesn’t enable the tinkering kids used to do with cars.
In the Navy I deal with a lot of young people who are showing up right out of high school and I am endlessly amazed at the increasing number of them who don't drive, don't know how to drive, don't have a drivers license and seemingly have no interest in getting one.
Almost all of them reply, "My parents wouldn't let me/never taught me" when I ask them why.
But you are right. When I learned to drive in the 80s, we all had muscle cars from the 1960s. This had little value at the time. They were just cars with crappy gas mileage the parents passed down to their kids. But we could work on them and there were a lot of hotrod shops that catered to making them fast.
That, and candy ass school boards are to craven to let kids get some grease on their hands. A couple of years back I was at a school at a small town in the middle of nowhere. They had constructed a brand new state of the art automotive shop instruction building with a full body work section with paint booths and drying room. It was like 2+ million dollars and I’d be willing to bet you could buy the majority of the towns dwellings with its cost.
This was the kind of place probably 80% of the guys here over 40 would have had to have been pried out of after hours by administrators. It was in its 2nd or 3rd year of complete non-use due to the administration squabbling and hand wringing over the potential for students to be exposed to hazardous materials during its use!
Kids today are being sold on the notion that cars are evil. You only buy (or lease) one to get a side hustle of driving for Uber. Otherwise bike, take public transport, or live in small pocket communities.