The vanishing young car buyer: New vehicle registrations drop for 18-34-year-olds

As affordability concerns mount, young adults are shifting their attitudes toward vehicle ownership, especially as many now face the return of student loan payments. Interest in used vehicles is growing, driven by lower monthly payments and reduced insurance costs.

At the same time, subscription-based services and car-sharing platforms are gaining traction, offering flexible new alternatives to traditional vehicle ownership. Unlike previous generations, today’s young adults can access vehicles without shouldering the full financial burden of purchasing and insuring a new car. 

Despite recent declines, adults aged 18-34 still accounted for nearly 1.1 million new vehicle registrations from April 2024 to March 2025. With the greatest lifetime customer value potential, this group offers plenty of opportunity for brands and dealerships that tailor offers to meet their needs.

Understanding young buyers’ financial constraints and shifting preferences is crucial for automotive retailers. An analysis from S&P Global Mobility shows the top segments that are appealing to younger buyers.

Compact utility vehicles lead with 21% of segment volume—more than double their 9.9% share of total volume. Compact cars are a solid but distant second at 13%. Notably, younger shoppers are diverging from broader hybrid trends, showing a preference for fully electric vehicles. 

Monitoring the decline of young car buyers is essential to shape effective marketing investment strategies. As their share of new vehicle registrations shrinks, understanding the unique challenges and purchasing triggers for this group becomes increasingly important. This trend highlights that marketing investment based on age demographics is no longer a reliable path to revenue and sales growth.

Instead, marketers can leverage data-driven tools to build advanced audiences and craft messaging strategies. These approaches offer new ways to boost sales—even among younger buyers. Strategies to consider:

• Prioritize advanced audience targeting that focuses on in-market shoppers and decrease reliance on demo-based buying.
• Use these advanced audiences across all marketing channels, not just in direct marketing efforts, to ensure consistent and efficient messaging.
• Invest in more addressable media.  Although often more expensive upfront, this approach typically delivers a higher return on investment and ad spend. 

Automotive marketing has long relied on a diverse toolkit of tactics to engage customers and drive dealership traffic. As the next generation of buyers grows increasingly selective and harder to reach, leveraging these tactics—combined with new data-driven strategies—will be essential to successfully connect with and convert young buyers in an evolving market.

With over 1,000 segments, including monthly payment options, see how Polk Auto Direct delivers for dealers.