Cars and more cars.

I think the cars were meant to show how the middle class lived in the prosperous Eisenhower years but it was too much of a stretch. Not that many parents would give teenagers good cars, but sure some of them did. We had kids with good cars when I went to high school, too, and in a fairly wealthy area (Newport Beach, Ca.), but they were in the minority.


"Did you make coffee...? Make it!"--Cheyenne.

I think the reason is that these are suburban kids who have rich parents and have no material needs. All of that is filled by their parents and money. Kids did have cars back then. Cars were still a bigger deal and in places an exotic novelty. They had way less rules and accident prevention programs back then so the teens, young adults drove around carelessly etc.

I went to high school in the '60s and most of the boys and many of the girls had cars. We got our driver's licenses as soon as we turned sixteen--nobody put it off. We did not expect to be given nice later-model cars by our parents; we were willing to drive old junkers (my first car, a '52 Studebaker, cost me $75.00). Boys learned to do their own maintenance and repairs so they could get and keep their old cars in decent condition, and many had part-time jobs. Gasoline was 25 to 35 cents a gallon, and insurance was cheap if you wanted it, but not even mandatory. The cost of traffic tickets ranged from around $15.00 to $50.00. The large student parking lot at my middle class high school was full every day. So it's completely plausible that many of the kids in "Rebel Without a Cause" would have cars.