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A comment on The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America. Parent comment

Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by macintux on Sunday December 24, 2017 @03:02PM (#16001072)
Random thought, to which I don't give a lot of credence but can't rule out entirely, is that tech work and car fandom often grow out of childhood/teenage obsessions, and most kids would only have one such obsession.

Related, it's also possible that it's a class thing. Many kids who grew up working on computers did so in a white collar household, many who worked on cars did so on a blue collar family.

Both mostly off-the-cuff speculation based in no small part on clichés.

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Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by WalterBright on Sunday December 24, 2017 @03:53PM (#16001263)
As a teenager I spent much time working on muscle cars. I was very disappointed at Caltech to find nobody interested in cars. None of my engineering coworkers since, either.

I've always missed working on cars with my friends.

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Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by anabis on Sunday December 24, 2017 @08:12PM (#16002134)
Somewhat countering your >most kids would only have one such obsession

Train nuts and computer nerds seem to have higher overlap.

MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club being a prominent example.

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Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by macintux on Sunday December 24, 2017 @08:22PM (#16002170)
Doesn't take many counter-examples to invalidate an idea. Good point.
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Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by cglace on Sunday December 24, 2017 @04:23PM (#16001362)
Most of my friends in college worked on their jeeps for rock climbing all the time. It definitely was not a cheap hobby.
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Re:The Only McLaren F1 Technician in North America by lbotos on Sunday December 24, 2017 @11:13PM (#16002602)
To throw my anecdote in the mix, growing up in the early 2000s, my blue collar extended family donated to me a bunch of old computers, which were much more accessable to me than a car. I imagine for kids today, the same is possible, old laptops, tablets, etc, hopefully decently hackable.

Now that I'm working in tech, my younger brother is interested in cars, so the trend/cycle is resetting itself :)

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