How Young Adults are Buying Cars Nowadays Differently than Past Generations

Generation X, Y, Baby Boomers

A recent study of car purchasing data between 2010 and 2014 has yielded some interesting insights as to how different generations buy cars and as to how car purchasing habits among young adults have changed from past generations to the recent Y generation which includes all those who were born between 1977 and 1994. Previous generations, the X generation and the Baby Boomers, showed quite different automobile purchasing patterns.

What Do Y-Gens Do Differently?

As the current study shows, nowadays, young adults are buying more new cars than Gen-X and Baby Boomers did when they were young adults. Over the surveyed four years, there was a 118 percent increase in the number of young adults purchasing new and also used cars. But this is not the only finding the researchers discovered. They also concluded that young Y-Gen adults prefer and therefore implement payment patterns relying on taking loans with several years of installments. Unlike Gen-X and Baby Boomers, who were taught to pay off loans as quickly as possible or not even to take them in the first place, and who therefore preferred to use cash in their auto purchases, Gen-Y young adults are not afraid of taking on a long term commitment as a way of life. Evidently, times have changed, as more diverse and popular loans courses have become available, making modern young adults not regard them as something to avoid.

But that is Not All

An additional finding this interesting research has revealed is that not only do Y-Gen young adults tend to finance their new purchased vehicles by long term loans, but they also tend to prefer smaller vehicles. More and more compact cars and small sized vehicle are staring in the sale charts of automobile agencies and dealerships. Some might say this can be a result of a diminished birth rate in modern families which makes larger vehicles redundant, while others might say that environmental reasons like protecting the environment through decreasing gas ejection by moving from larger vehicles to smaller vehicles also plays a major part in explaining this phenomenon.

This is surely an interesting social change that pertains to a large portion of society.