The auto industry is panicked about its future. And like any aging group confronting decline, its response is predictable: blame teenagers.

Except, in this case, it's deserved. Today's younger generations just aren't climbing behind the wheel at the rate of their predecessors. In 2011, the

University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute

released a study showing that, although 46 percent of 16-year-olds had driver's licenses in 1978, in 2008, that number had dropped to 31 percent. Those

numbers, says Sheryl Connelly, Ford's manager of Global Trends and Futuring, "gave us pause."

Pause—hell, panic—is appropriate when confronting a massive decline in one's potential customer base. Especially when it concerns the desires of the

largest demographic in American history, the 80-million-strong youth group known as the Millennials.

Simple economics proved a major factor: Measured in constant dollars, the price of new cars and gasoline has increased by 35 percent since the 1980s (used

cars and insurance are similarly more expensive); driver's education, once free in high schools, is now a pricey extracurricular; and fees for driving

infractions have soared as cash-strapped municipalities increasingly rely on the revenue generated by traffic tickets. All this while youth employment has

plummeted and youth debt has skyrocketed.

With the overall population gravitating toward urban centers, the availability of public transit also makes auto ownership less necessary. Car-sharing

services like Zipcar reduce this need further while playing into Millennials' preference for access (think music in the cloud) over ownership

(all your useless CDs). But the biggest barrier may be the Internet.

"A car, for boomers, even Gen X, was a rite of passage into adulthood, an iconic symbol of independence," Connelly says. "Today, the smart-phone has

surpassed the car. It transcends time and space, bringing Millennials together when they're apart. And access happens much earlier than 16." The ability to

text, "like," and game virtually allows for a private peer-based world that was once most easily attained with a vehicle.

So, yes, the auto industry is scared. Frankly, as a magazine dedicated to the fervent love of all things car, the situation also concerns us. But

we're in a privileged position. We've decided to counter this heinous trend one automotive agnostic at a time: We nabbed one of the unlicensed masses and

flew him to vehicular Valhalla to anoint him with engine grease and baptize him in tire smoke. We wanted to bring him to the car side.

Don't scoff. Every religion started with a single convert.

I. "Ballin'!"

Our proselyte is Ellis Gibbard-Maiorino, a laconic, baby-faced college freshman. Raised in Manhattan's East Village, his liberation from

parental purview arrived early. "When I was 11," he says, "I could take the subway everywhere by myself." Ellis is attuned to grit and graffiti, but he has

no driver education, no license, no vehicular mojo. "I don't really pay attention to cars," he says as we board our flight to Los Angeles.

We disclose nothing of our epic itinerary, and instead try to whet Ellis's appetite with car-themed in-flight entertainment for the six-hour

journey—everything from the illicit-supercar porn of Gone in 60 Seconds to the righteous horror of an old driver's-ed film called Joy Ride.

In hindsight, any heel-and-toe antics played out on a small screen were sure to be upstaged by the vehicle that awaited us outside LAX. It's the one

surrounded by the crowd, the cops, and the white-gloved chauffeur: an arctic-white Rolls-Royce Ghost. Ellis recognizes the marque

instantly, which we take as a positive omen. Our driver, Walter, clues him in to the other kind of recognition this car bestows: "If we were in a

Camry," he says, "the cops would have whisked us out of here long ago."

As with any sojourn to SoCal, our obligatory first stop is to grab a burger at In-N-Out. Ellis orders a Double-Double ("lots of extra napkins, please"),

and we head southwest. In between devouring his burger, checking the acres of leather and wood for ketchup smears, and asking Walter when he learned to

drive and what's the fastest he's ever driven, Ellis obsessively texts his friends. "Damn, that's sick," they respond. "Ballin'!"

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II. "If we roll it, then you can be scared."

The $365,000 saloon whisks us 90 miles along the delightfully meth-y edge of the Inland Empire until we pass a sign that reads "Pavement Ends." Beyond the sign and around a few bends lies a rambling Spanish-style house, a repair and fabrication shop, and a sprawling 21-acre hooning compound complete with separate tracks for rally cars, motocross, freestyle motocross, and trucks. This is where X Games dominator and Metal Mulisha founder Brian Deegan perfects his particular brand of dirt-flavored

insanity. Surrounded by the smells of weld spark and

manure, Ellis stares up at an arching wooden ramp.

"I'm going to die," he says, matter-of-factly.

Tattooed and muscular, Deegan has a languidly mischievous manner, always glancing around you to see where the fun is. Ellis echoes his earlier questions,

asking when Deegan got his license and how fast he's driven. After relating his history of dominating the X Games, inventing freestyle motocross, and

becoming a winning off-road racer, we pile into Deegan's Ford F-150 SVT Raptor—a stock-engined, matte-wrapped, Mad Max-ian menace outfitted with

Metal Mulisha-brand wheels, tires, bumpers, lights, and exhaust. Ozzy's "Mama, I'm Coming Home" wails on Sirius XM's Hair Nation as we blast up the giant

furrowed dirt course that occupies Deegan's side yard. Ellis has a death grip on the grab handle.

"No reason to be scared," Deegan says, adding, "If we roll it, then you can be scared."

Deegan punches it, controlling the truck with the arms of a Civil War medic—large yet surgically precise sawings. We launch over blunt pyramid-shaped

hillocks and plow down deeply cratered ravines. We gain air, slam the truck into its bump stops, and raise dust clouds that would hearten the Joads. Deegan

laughs the whole time, as Ellis discovers the involuntary effect such jouncing has on the human limbic system, each launch and land extracting a delighted

gurgle. Around us, sunglasses, notebooks, iPhones, and limbs soar through the cab, a weightless sea of jetsam.

A couple of hours later, our visit coming to an end, Deegan regales

Ellis with stories of racing through the desert, blind, at 105 mph—all while bombing down one of the compound's gravel roads at that exact speed. Heading

back to the Rolls, our insides not yet settled, we ask a dusty Ellis for his assessment.

"I want a truck," he says.

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III. "I know it's a sports car, but what's it for?"

The next morning, the valet retrieves our car. Not the Rolls, mind you, our other car: a Rosso Mars Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Super Trofeo

Stradale. Ellis eyes its audacious shape, the ten-pack breastplate under the engine lid, and the rear wing that could tempt a gymnast. "Is that . . . a

Ferrari?" he asks.

Maybe he means the brand, or maybe, in his mind, that's the proprietary eponym for Zany Supercar. Regardless, although he whoops and waves as we tear up

the Pacific Coast Highway, as time passes, his bafflement only seems to grow. Taking in the hard-shelled seats, illegible instruments, and impudent V-10

scream—all the things that make a Lambo a Lambo, and the very reasons we adore it—Ellis says: "I know it's a sports car, but what's it for?" We begin to

wonder if this particular automotive fantasy is too advanced for the uninitiated.

Eventually, we reach the Mojave Desert and Willow Springs International Raceway. Willow is the oldest permanent road course in America, and it looks the

part in a charmingly dusty way. Brightening the scenery considerably is a Porsche 911 Carrera S in Guards Red, a rigorously optioned model equipped with

$8500 carbon-ceramic brakes, a $5000 Burmester stereo, and 31-year-old Porsche factory racing driver Patrick Long.

Ellis, of course, has no idea who he is, and so asks him, too, the fastest he has driven. "The mid-200s," Long replies, and for once, Ellis seems genuinely

startled. As Long briefs him on the car, the kid looks flushed.

"I'm probably going to shit my pants," he says.

They roar off, and we head for a hairy uphill bend to observe the action. Long does what he does best, consistently nailing Willow's complex curves with

perfectly controlled drifts, melting rubber lap after lap. Just watching him prompts a kind of slack-jawed euphoria. Yet every pass sees an unfazed, almost

serene Ellis staring out from the passenger window. We want to scream at the kid: "You're circling a racetrack with Patrick F***ing Long!" Then

again, to the uninformed, what would that even mean? If you've never coveted your neighbor's Mustang or kept your own ancient Honda running with duct tape

and willpower, then maybe hitting 140 mph at a classic American track with a Le Mans-winning wheelman is decontextualized to the point of a goof—just some

crazy roller coaster without rails.

And so, it's time Ellis gets a driving lesson.

As it turns out, Ellis does have some prior instruction, though it sounds less educational than existential. "My grandpa tried to teach me how to park," he

says, "in an empty field." Given this meager tutelage, we're shocked when, after circling the skidpad just twice, Professor Long has

Ellis pin the gas, sending the bright-red Porsche roaring across the tarmac. Asked about the decision when the 911 returns (slowly), Long shrugs.

"He earned my trust really fast, so we went from coasting right to launch control. Either he's really good, or I'm really stupid."

Ever modest, Ellis defers to the car's innate composure: "That Porsche is much smoother than my grandpa's LTD."

He further redeems himself that evening when we set Ellis loose in the parking lot of Bob's Big Boy in Burbank to peruse the weekly classic-car cruise that

gathers there. As a test, we encourage him to point out what he finds compelling. We're worried that, instead of converting the kid, we're ruining him with

access and excess. But he passes, avoiding the cheesy and obvious and gravitating toward the weird: a Grand National, an Avanti, a Pantera. We relish

answering his questions about these cars, invoking the ways they tell us about their time. He wanders toward a De Lorean, its stainless-steel body glowing

green in the fluorescents. "Like, for example," he says, "this tells us about the Eighties."

Right on, Ellis.

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IV.

"We're historians . . . passing on this heritage."

Mark Machado, a.k.a. Mr. Cartoon, is a compact Mexican-American guy in pressed jeans, pristine Nikes, and meticulously slicked hair. He's also L.A.'s most

famous tattoo and airbrush artist, with a stunning collection of classic Chevrolet lowriders—the reason we've journeyed to his downtown studio on the edge

of Skid Row.

Lined up against some invisible vector, they're arranged in the studio in

ascending order: a nocturnal '58 nicknamed "Gotham City"; a copper-pink '59 known as "Penny Lane"; and a gleaming, sky-blue '60 called "Heaven's Gate."

Cartoon's five-year-old daughter, Impala, was christened in their honor. Each is laden with an array of chrome

accessories that would fill a swap meet and empty a bank account. Each is painted and pinstriped and airbrushed into an iridescent veneer. And each is

detailed three times a week, regardless of whether it's driven.

Ellis, a street-art aficionado, is finally enthralled.

Cartoon shows us around each vehicle, simultaneously imparting stories of their provenance and Los Angeles's lowrider culture. "We're historians," he says,

"preserving and passing on this heritage." After the tour, Cartoon takes Ellis for a ride in another of his cars: a Godzilla-muraled,

burgundelicious 1960 Impala convertible. As they head toward East L.A., the exhaust blats, Cartoon honks, and the car dances on its comically narrow

whitewalls. Onlookers cheer. Ellis beams, reveling in the refracted glory.

Our theory is that everyone has a hook. For

Ellis, the Porsche ride may have been nothing but a high-speed lark, the Roller an expensive toy—but with Cartoon's creations, he comes alive: "I love the

style of his cars. They're art."

But, our adventure ending, he becomes pragmatic. "Still, they're so much work to maintain. And where would I park them?"

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V. "How much would

something like that cost?"





Why, why do teens have to act so aloof? Over the course of a weekend, we've given Ellis a tour of L.A. in a car costing more than many houses. A

bona fide dirt stud took him massively airborne. Hell, he received his first—okay, technically second—driving lesson from a guy who sprayed champagne at Le

Mans. And yet we still can't tell if we've converted the kid.

And then, as we waft westward in the Ghost

en route to the airport, we notice Ellis taking stock of the vehicles around him. Suddenly, he points to an E46-chassis BMW 3-series.

"How much would something like that cost?"

"About $18,000," we respond. "But that's the high-performance M3. You don't need all that."

Ellis nods. "What about an older BMW . . . like, from the Eighties?"

Mental fist pump! He's hit upon the modern gearhead's quintessential first car, the BMW E30. We can barely contain our elation; we tell him he could get a

decent runner for three grand, even offer to help him find a good one when he's ready. So does this mean he's one of us now? At the very least, will he get

his license?

"It's definitely more of a priority now," he says. "Maybe this summer." Then he turns back to the hazy Los Angeles afternoon, endless freeways stretching

out before him.

"But I get lazy in the summer, so who knows?"

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