Originally Posted by
csl177
^^^ Perhaps more a function of the cars in popular use by a particular generation. Younger people may not recognize distinct car styling differences of the '40-'60s, while older people can't tell what a '80-'90s
anything is. Or for that matter, find it in a parking lot.
Precisely.
If you think about it objectively, a mid-'50s Chevy (or any other mainstream American manufacturer) is just as much a pair of bricks with the edges sanded down as a modern Japanese car is a piece of melted fruit. Early-'90s hatchbacks also look a lot alike, though I have no clever analogy.
The ability to differentiate really only comes from how much a person wants to be able to. A layman might only care which carmaker and their associated car shapes gives the most prestige and thus be able to differentiate between a "premium" German car and all that other non-Teutonic proletariat crap. An old man might only know about cars from his youth because at a certain point in his life other things took over from his teenage love of speed and he hasn't paid attention to the evolution of car design since.
By the same token, a teenager probably could tell you the difference between the cars they are growing up with because they have been searching for their first car. It's also a lot easier to absorb the information gradually; if you only see a design you haven't seen before once in a while, you can learn its subtleties. Whereas, if you go to a classic-car show and are overloaded by unfamiliar shapes, you cannot digest them all at once and are more likely to say they all look the same. For the longest time, my one car-spotting Achilles heel was '80s Jap iron because I had zero interest in it. However, now that I am looking for cars that achieve economy through lightness, they are beginning to appear on my radar and I am getting better at differentiating them.
As a random aside: It's hilarious to listen in on my non-gearhead friends' conversations about cars and to hear them state all the batshit theories and false information that they have accrued.
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"