The proportion of 16-year-olds with a driver’s license has been cut in half since 1983, dropping from nearly 50 percent to about 25 percent by 2024. The auto industry reads that stat and panics. But Ezra Dyer, Car and Driver’s senior editor, decided to test the thesis with something more persuasive than a survey — a 1001-horsepower Lamborghini Revuelto rolled into a high school automotive class.
The setup was pure theater. Dyer slipped the $753,000 plug-in hybrid into the school garage on silent electric power while teacher Donald Martin played Lamborghini’s official hype reel for a classroom full of unsuspecting students. When the door opened, Dyer lit the 6.5-liter V-12, and the sound of Sant’Agata Bolognese bounced off cinderblock walls. Two dozen teenagers swarmed.
Dyer had planned a talk. The car rendered him irrelevant. He managed to get out the basics — 1001 combined horsepower from a V-12 and three electric motors, a claimed 217-mph top speed, carbon fiber everything — then stepped aside before getting trampled.
What happened next matters more than the spectacle. The students didn’t just gawk. They noticed engineering details that would impress a product engineer.
One kid spotted the raised latch position on the front trunk that lets the charge cord pass through while keeping the lid locked. Another named Greyson wanted to know about cupholders — “How am I supposed to drink my matcha at 217 miles per hour?” — and learned they deploy Porsche-style from the dash. A student named William popped the fuel filler door and identified the drain hole in the housing before Dyer could explain it. The kid beat the journalist to the insight.
This is the disconnect the industry keeps missing. Declining license rates do not equal declining enthusiasm. They equal declining affordability.
Martin, who teaches the automotive class, put it plainly: “I think it’s more about money than not being interested. When the average new car is around $50,000, that’s a big problem.” He weaves financial literacy into his curriculum alongside wrench work because the barrier to car culture in 2026 is economic, not emotional.
Dyer’s own son Rhys, 15, attends the school. The student parking lot tells its own story — a lifted Volvo V70 Cross Country, a caged Miata, a drift-spec E46 BMW. These aren’t appliances. They’re statements from kids who play Forza, hit Cars & Coffee on weekends, and want to turn wrenches.
The passion is there. The pathway is harder.
The Revuelto itself is a fascinating artifact of where the car industry is headed. It pairs that screaming V-12 with plug-in hybrid technology, delivering a handful of electric-only miles alongside supercar violence. It is simultaneously a throwback and a bridge forward, the kind of machine that could make a teenager fall in love with internal combustion while accepting electrification as part of the deal.
Dyer closed the visit by demonstrating the Balboni-style reverse — sitting on the door sill, looking over his shoulder, the way you’d have to in a Countach with visibility measured in postage stamps. The Countach was a kid’s dream machine in the 1980s. The Revuelto is that poster now, and the reaction in a North Carolina high school garage confirms it.
The auto industry spends billions trying to understand the next generation of buyers. It funds focus groups, commissions studies, and agonizes over engagement metrics. A simpler diagnostic exists.
Bring a V-12 Lamborghini to a room full of teenagers and watch what happens. They don’t shrug. They swarm, they inspect, they ask sharp questions, and they want more.
Kids haven’t fallen out of love with cars. Cars have priced themselves out of reach. That’s a different problem, and a harder one to solve with a hype video.
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