'The Next-Gen Guide to Car Collecting' Seeks to Demystify Collector-Car Ownership for First-Timers

About a decade or so ago, Veteran New York Times automotive writer Robert Yeager began noticing an interesting emergent trend in the collector-car market. “I started writing about auctions and the growth of the importance of the Internet,” he told Car and Driver. “And one of the people I interviewed at Bonham’s, this big auction house, noted that they were really starting to sell a lot of cars to younger people.”

When he cross-referenced this anecdotal information with other data sources, he found it true.

“The enthusiast hobby had been dominated by older folks, mostly men. But the whole world of collectible cars was changing and, and buyers were getting younger. And it was really becoming very dramatic.”

This led Yeager to pitch, sell, and write a book about the subject, The Next Gen Guide to Car Collecting: How to Buy, Sell, Live With & Love a Collectible Car (Motorbooks, $29.99).

The book is very much an instructive guide, featuring, as the title suggests, step-by-step information on how to source, purchase, and care for any vintage vehicle. It also offers a deep-dive guide to specific up-and-coming models from America, Japan, and Europe, mainly those from the last decades of the 20th century, now popular with Millennials and Gen X-ers. And it throws in some automotive history, particularly some stories of women in the hobby, many of whom have not received their deserved recognition.

More than this, the book focuses on the ways in which we as humans connect with our vehicles, or the vehicles we long for.