This is unfortunate but true. I was instantly drawn to hotrods and performance cars as a kid and have pursued it as a hobby all my life. I'm going to a swap meet later today where I'm sure I'll find the median age at about 53.
I'm reluctant to make blanket statements so let me just say that all of my efforts to entice kids into the hobby have fallen on deaf ears. They just don't have any interest. So many kids these days see cars only for their utility value - they don't appreciate technology (unless it is built-in electronics) or performance (although I'll admit that a lot of cars these days are pretty peppy).
Customizing cars seems limited to putting in bigger speakers and an amplifier. Taking a torch to one seems like a lost art these days.
*Sigh* - another facet of Americana being polished off in favor of shapeless, flavorless, boring blobs.
Today to get a car a 16 year old could work on you would have to go back into the 1980's and cars being built then were mainly junk. The cars we drove you could sit on the hood. Today's cars it would cause several thousand dollars damage LOL.
The thing is todays cars are not built for the average shade tree mechanic to work on. My ex-father in law is a retired mechanic. He mainly worked on diesel engines but could fix any of the older engines from old VW bugs to a Detroit 671. He takes his car to the shop. In 1976 I had a new F-100. I could fix anything on it. Tune ups were easy you just climbed under the hood and sat down on the wheel well. Last year I changed out the plug wires and plugs on my 95 F-100 w/302 and I was cussing. I had to stand on a step ladder bending down into the engine to reach parts I could not even see.
Yesterday I was at my cousins house and his 97 Toyota 4Runner needed a new water pump. I never saw such a mess in my life. The older cars you could fix on the side of the road in a few hours. Todays cars a sensor located in some obscure place will leave you sitting and only a garage with a diagnostics system can determine which one is bad. The Crank Positioning Sensor is notorious for this. With breaker points you had some warning. I've had at least 3 tow bills because of that one issue.
My dream car fix up I never got to do. I bought my sisters 65 Mercury Comet. I had every intention of putting a 302 in it :>} But at the time there were kids to raise and bills to pay. But I did have a 71 Torino with a 302 stock. My youngest daughter needed a car so it got traded off. There was no way I was turning her loose with that LOL.