“The days of the petrolhead are numbered,” says the media. “Rubbish” says John Glynn, who has complete confidence in the next generation of car fanatics.

The daily papers are awash with tales of woe: soaring energy prices, crashing economies and knife-wielding thugs at the gates of every school. With so much bad news everywhere, peace of mind now depends on getting no news at all. “No news is good news” as all of our grandmothers used to say.

Our grandparents’ generation endured their catastrophes, and we must have ours - that is the way of the world. As one generation matures and begins their weary descent towards decrepitude, so the next generation must step up to take the reins.

As the end of the oil age looms into view, many enthusiasts of the internal combustion engine have begun to lament the inevitable cessation of the activity they hold nearest to their hearts. I am talking of course about enjoying the unbeatable combination that is open roads and open throttles. But the era of new energy need not be as scary as many would have us think. A quick sift through some of the well-populated Internet car forums is proof positive that the next generation of hot rodders will not let the lack of a petrol engine stand in the way of an entertaining drive.

I recently added to my fleet of much-loved vehicles (9 at last count) by buying an elderly Volkswagen Golf GTi from a fellow 911 enthusiast. The GTi is a very nice car, but as I am not much of a one for preserving originality, I have been swotting up on effective performance mods on the Golf boards, like the one at ClubGTI.co.uk. I have to say that the achievements of some of the kids on there are not to be sniffed at, particularly when it comes to the complicated business of designing, building and mapping quick and reliable Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) systems.

For some time now, I’ve had a full Megasquirt DIY EFI setup and 964 cams squirreled away in the rafters of my garage, waiting to be installed on my Carrera 3.0. Since buying the Megasquirt, I have been mega busy, and project time remains elusive. The car is still keeping up with my buddies, so I don’t have the same impetus to change stuff that I might have had 20 years ago. Not that I could have done this stuff 20 years ago. Much has changed since I started playing with motors.

When I got my first car, a Datsun 100A 2 door in dazzling Drab Green (christened “Rusty” by my sister after much of the trim fell off on our first drive out the dual carriageway), there was no such thing as accessible performance upgrades. If you wanted it, you had to make it yourself.

I lived in Insurance Hell, also known as Ireland, and my Third Party, Fire and Theft premium in the first year of car ownership was three times Rusty’s £500 cost. Modifying one’s car in Ireland was considered to be an act of moral turpitude second only to scrapping a tractor, so performance exhausts and uprated air filters were unheard of. In-car audio did not exist outside of a BMW dealership, unless you count those little triangular speaker boxes that sat on top of the rear shelf, freely sliding around in corners - the early days of surround sound.

There were two car accessory shops nearby, whose main product lines were nylon seat covers and static strips, moulded in black rubber with a fork of white lightning. One hung these off the back of the car, to discharge the onboard electricity produced by polyester trousers rubbing against nylon seat covers. Shame this was also before the days of Buy One: Get One Free.

These days, things are different. The Internet has transformed tinkering into a global tuning movement, and what one enthusiast does to his car in Stockholm will be on a similar car in Southend a few hours later. The auto accessory shops we grew up with have all but vanished, replaced by modern day Temples of Tuning, with more alloy wheels on sale under one roof than Rover would have used in a year back in the seventies.

Not all kids are into the bling rims and pumping tunes though; the race for headline HP numbers amongst the hot hatch brigade is more ferocious than ever. Some of the up-and-coming members of the young-men-in-sheds scene are pulling twice the original factory horsepower out of old-school mechanical injection cars without resorting to boost, which is seriously impressive stuff. Alongside these guys are pioneers building bespoke powerplants using engine parts dragged out of scrapyards, before adding mix-and-match injection systems to take driveability and fuel economy to whole new levels. This is all very worthy work from youngsters who the media would have you believe are only interested in binge drinking and Nuts magazine.

It will be interesting to watch what growing up on a diet of DIY engine management systems will allow the next generation to do with hybrid technology, as it depreciates to a level where they can afford to take it apart and put it back together in faster fettle. One thing is worth remembering: these could be the characters who will make it possible to keep running our older 911s using alternative drivetrains when the oil runs out. So watch this space - carefully.