I lived near a kid named Danny when I lived up in Plum Boro, and his thing used to be he would save a few bucks every payday and when he had enough money, he would go out and buy some old POS car off someone. Didn't matter what year, make, or model it was, all it had to do was run. Then he would go out late some weekend night, and just dog that crap out of that car. He would do doughnuts in parking lots, jump ditches, drive cross country, hit light poles, he even drove one car off a bridge and into the Allegheny River! He would dog the car until it wouldn't go another inch, and then when it died he would just leave it where it sat, find a phone, and have a buddy pick him up. And since this was the 1970s and there was no record he had purchased the car, the cops would just tow the wreck away and that was the end of another clunker. Danny went through ten cars that I knew of.
So the new car culture isn't any better or worse than the old one.
