Jack Price joined the Marines in fall 2021 knowing he would need a car to get around base and that he couldn’t afford a new one. A joyless, month-long search through dealer classifieds and Facebook Marketplace listings ended when his mother spotted a 2010 Volkswagen Jetta posted on her office listserv by a co-worker moving abroad. With just 60,000 miles (96,560km) on themeter, the car (a manual!) was mechanically sound, and the air conditioning, sunroof and Bluetooth radio worked too. At $6,000, it was a steal. Price paid in cash.

Five years on, the Jetta, which he called the Pewter Pebble, is still carting him from A to B in unassuming style. “I’ve completely driven it into the ground,” says the 30-year-old, who lives in Los Angeles. “All over bases, cross-country a couple times, not really lovingly. I get so much crap from people, but not people my age.”

For generations, buying a first new car has been a rite of passage in the US, the clearest sign of a young person responsibly striking out on their own. But younger millennials and gen Z are increasingly finding that path blocked. The average new vehicle costs more than $50,000, an alarming figure that reflects Americans’ insatiable appetite for progressively larger SUVs and pickups. Meanwhile, adults under 35 are disappearing from showroom floors, accounting for less than 10% of new vehicle registrations in 2024 – a new low.

According to the credit reporting agency Experian, the average monthly car payment in the US is $765 for a new car and $542 for a used one, with the loan terms now stretching to six, even seven, years. A record 21% of new-car buyers pay $1,000 or more a month, according to the autos research group Edmunds. And that’s before factoring in maintenance, fluctuating gas prices and the eye-watering insurance premiums often charged to drivers under 35.

For many young Americans already under the strain of student loans, high housing costs and an unforgiving labor market, buying a new car or even a newer used one is out of the question. Enter the Y2K car – the retro ride that has become a trendy romantic choice for some younger Americans. “There’s definitely a golden era of cars from the late 90s and early 2000s that people just really want all of a sudden,” says Charlie Spears, a service adviser at an independently owned repair shop in Atlanta who conducts prepurchase inspections of used cars on demand. “A lot of people just want something that’s not going to fail them.”

Y2K cars don’t encompass everything produced in that era. They are the ones that simply won’t die. Think wedge-shaped Honda Accords and slab-sided Toyota Camrys: dependable, hand-me-down transport that can last 150,000 miles or more with routine maintenance. (Price’s Jetta, which was built at the end of a model production run that began in 2005, just makes the cut.) They’re economical to run and relatively inexpensive to insure, owing to their drastically lower worth. Best of all, the purchase price is low enough to pay in cash. Even when buyers need a loan – at steep interest rates as modern cars have in effect become mortgage payments on wheels – they can pay it off in a fraction of the time it takes to finance a newer car.

The supply of these bargains is dwindling: used vehicles priced under $15,000, the sweet spot for Y2K cars, have shrunk from 21% of inventory a year ago to 15%, according to industry analysis from Cox Automotive – numbers that speak to the demand for affordable cars. “Part of the draw is the nostalgia factor – people wanting cars they grew up with,” says Consumer Reports’ autos expert Keith Barry. “An old car with the right music on is kind of the closest thing to a time machine.”

On social media, the Y2K car has emerged as an ironic status symbol – a marker of maturity, grit and lack of pretense. Defects – busted aircon, glitchy windows, bits and bobs that have failed, fallen off or been held on with gaffer tape – are simply treated as part of a Y2K car’s personality. “I don’t know what kind of disease that is in the brain,” says one TikTok creator, who has to pry open the fuel door of her 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander with a screwdriver. “But I don’t get frustrated. I’m like, ‘Oh, this is fun.’”

In a Y2K car that takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’, creature comforts are beside the point. For many, part of the appeal is the absence of dashboard infotainment displays and other screens that have replaced basic switches and knobs in newer cars, often in the name of cost-cutting. Automakers’ zeal to monetize in-car technology, sometimes charging extra to activate physically installed features such as heated seats and remote start, only reinforces young buyers’ doubts about the value of a new car.

At the same time, do-it-yourself repairs have become harder as cars grow more digitally complex and auto manufacturers cut off access to owners and even independent mechanics. Oftentimes, they require investing in specialty digital readers or computer software to diagnose problems, and bespoke tools for wrenching. Most car owners would sooner punt, take the car to the dealership and pay whatever the maintenance and repair costs – which, of course, is exactly the vertical integration that shareholder-bound manufacturers are after.

Hence the romance with Y2K cars: you can fix ‘em yourself, their old-school controls fall easily to hand, they’re tried and tested, seemingly built to last. They just have an aura of invincibility – never mind that their age makes them fundamentally more dangerous and susceptible to frequent repairs. “I’ve used my Jetta as if it were a truck,” Price says. “Transported trees in it, put my surfboard through the sunroof. I’ve done every single thing possible to thrash it beyond its abilities.”

Price’s passengers, however, don’t have much appreciation for Pewter Pebble’s quirks. Often while carpooling to US military installations, senior officers compelled to hold up the sagging headliner would ask him when he was trading in his beater for a new truck or SUV. It was a similar story when Price left the military last year and started chauffeuring Alex Vindman, the Iraq war veteran turned US Senate hopeful, on the campaign trail during Florida’s special election. “I drove him around a couple times in it, and he was like, ‘What is going on?’” Price says. “The fact that we expect folks who are getting paid, like, a grand a month to have a new car is nuts.”

Twenty-five miles north-west of downtown Atlanta, a half hour’s drive in optimistic traffic, sits Town Center at Cobb, a typical suburban mall in recession. But on the first Sunday of every month, the mall parking comes alive for Caffeine and Octane, a sprawling car show that’s open to the public, free to attend and also has long lines for coffee and donut trucks. And even though the usual turnout of 2,000-plus cars was winnowed down to a few hundred on the gray, showery morning of October’s show, it was still an impressive array of vintage American muscle, Japanese domestic market (or JDM) unicorns and multimillion-dollar exotics. The Y2K cars stood out, too.

Sitting right at the entrance of the show was Anthony DeNaples’s 2000 Buick Regal GS, a sleeper sedan that has become a cult classic. He bought it four months ago for $18,000 on Facebook Marketplace, a price he considered a bargain for such a rare commuter. “Person didn’t really know what they had,” says the 37-year-old custom car builder, who uses the car to ferry his two young daughters. His oldest is constantly goading him to do burnouts, which she calls “making stripes”. Modern cars, he reasons, have become so laden with safety systems – for keeping the car in lane, or slamming on the brakes when sensors detect an obstacle – that they’re less fun to drive hard. “A lot of newer cars, if you want to drive it how it’s meant to be driven, you’ve gotta shut off all these things, and a lot of times it doesn’t completely shut off.”

A few rows down from the Buick were Mike and Kate Landaverde in his-and-hers Honda Civics from the 90s: a barebones CRX coupe called Dirty Gertrude and a slightly less spartan wagon called Tatiana. The couple bought them cheap, in keeping with the Y2K ethos. Mike, 34, treats having to bump-start the CRX and his sweat-soaked commutes in summer traffic as part of the thrill ride. “I’m smiling the whole time,” says Mike, who manages a local Wendy’s. They keep a 2021 Toyota Corolla hatchback in the garage as a backstop. That car’s got AC.

When young Wendy’s customers pull up to the drive-through in newer barges he assumes carry huge monthly payments, Mike can’t help feeling a bit smug. The couple’s Hondas, however, haven’t necessarily come cheap. Kate, 39, reckons the money she has put into modifications on Tatiana alone could buy a new car. But the occasional outlays – on an engine swap, most recently – can be done at a self-directed pace. “You can do the mods at your own wallet bracket,” says Kate, a software specialist who does her own wrenching. “You can go eBay parts. But all my friends call me bougie because I’m not gonna do anything cheap.”

Meanwhile, making a case for best in show was Alex Jimenez in a 2001 Volkswagen Eurovan tricked out to look like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine. “My family is growing,” said Jimenez, a 32-year-old facilities manager, as his 14-year-old daughter Izel sat shotgun scrolling through her phone while a Scooby-Doo cartoon played on the aftermarket infotainment display. Beyond the extra space, he says, “we love it because I can literally fix everything at home. I don’t need special equipment or tools or a computer to diagnose what’s wrong with it. And it puts smiles on people’s faces everywhere we drive. I mean, everybody’s taking pictures.”

Y2K cars have their charms, sure. Barry, of Consumer Reports calls it “survivorship bias” – seeing the most durable makes and models still on the road contributes to assumptions that all from the era must be rock solid. But there’s a reason the automotive industry moved on. “If you go back to cars in the 1990s, our road-test data and reliability surveys were showing problems that were unheard of on modern vehicles: defective paint, parts falling off; the steering wheel would be on crooked,” Barry says. Rust is another scourge of Y2K cars, though it’s less of a concern in the Sun belt. Newer models are far better protected against corrosion. “The technology that allows a car’s body and frame to survive longer is just so much more advanced,” says Barry, adding that a modern car from a manufacturer that prioritizes reliability can reasonably be expected to last 200,000 miles or more with proper maintenance. To his point: the average car on American roads is now 13 years old.

Still, some young Y2K-car owners welcome the opportunity to get their hands dirty. Che Bidal, a 19-year-old Pit operator who also belongs to the furry community, was idling inside his 2004 Mazda6 as the rain poured on Caffeine and Octane. He takes immense pride in having bought the broken sedan for $900 and getting it running again with another $1,500 in parts and help from AI chatbots and YouTube tutorials. Having Frankensteined a Y2K car back to life, the prospect of taking on a new car payment – in this economy – only to be discouraged by the manufacturer from making his own repairs seems ridiculous. “Car companies are banks now,” says Bidal, who was further emboldened by his positive experience under the hood to start a wrenching group for furries. “Coming from fandom into the [auto enthusiast] community is a whole different thing – pretty amazing.”

Nevertheless, there’s a critical difference between a car that’s gratifying to restore and one that can protect you when something goes terribly wrong. Modern cars are subject to increasingly demanding safety standards, and the differences in structural reinforcements and accident-avoidance features between models just three years apart can be dramatic. Consumer Reports has long recommended that drivers prioritize safety as much as their budget allows – advice that its largely Boomer readership can more easily take aboard, naturally.

Barry went through an old-car phase too. “When I was driving around in my 1988 Renault Medallion, I’d see someone come across the center line as they’re looking on their phone and think, ‘I would not stand a chance in an overlap collision,’” he says. “You might think that the older car you’re driving is a tank. Well, the car might be fine. It’s the things inside the car, the new safety features, that help you survive.” Features like blind-spot monitoring, driver attention monitoring and electric stability control, which intervenes to maintain traction in a skid.

The US auto industry has made some effort to address young consumers’ affordability concerns. In 2021, Ford introduced the Maverick, a four-door compact pickup with an available hybrid powertrain and a starting price below $30,000. A startup called Slate, which offers an infinitely customizable electric truck with a starting price of about $25,000, hopes to begin fulfilling orders at the end of this year.

In China, buyers can get new cars with features that would seem extravagant at the same price point in the US – the payoff from decades of Chinese investment in innovation and American offshoring of manufacturing. An affordable, widely available Chinese car with modern features would give young US car buyers something truly tantalizing to consider. But Chinese automakers are in effect shut out of the US market. Even if they weren’t, Barry cautions: “We’re still not getting one for $8,000. Think closer to $20,000. You’re still going to have a car payment. And even if the interior is simple, it’s a different kind of simplicity than someone driving a 99 Camry is looking for.”

Ultimately, young consumers just want cars that deliver on the industry’s fabled promise of independence – and right now, Y2K cars are meeting the brief. These days, Price’s Pewter Pebble struggles with a leaky sunroof, and the headliner is still drooping. “It’s a Volkswagen so it’s coming back to bite me in the butt,” he says. “I’ve probably had to put three grand into it this year.” But with more than 150,000 miles on the clock, it’s taken him further than even he could have imagined.

The absence of a car note helped him become a homeowner in his 20s. It softened the blow of Alex Vindman’s upset loss to Democratic socialist Angie Nixon in Florida’s August Senate primary. Rather than scramble for another job, Price took a European vacation to decompress and plot his next move. As it happens, he spoke to the Guardian from the Spanish Pyrenees. “If I had a car payment and I lost my job,” he says, “I wouldn’t have the flexibility to hike a mountain.”