Car Trouble

   When I was around 14 years old, pretty much all I could think about was getting my driver’s license and getting my first car. I imagined skillfully piloting along some back road, expertly carving every curve, with the fury of the engine and the wind and the road filling up my senses.

   Any cash I could scrape out of birthday cards or odd jobs went straight into the old Car Jar. My bedroom walls were plastered with Ferrari and Lamborghini posters. A little beyond the reach of the Car Jar, sure, but why not dare to dream?

   I’ll admit there was one Christie Brinkley poster on my wall that busted up the car-themed monotony. But here’s the thing: It was Christie Brinkley driving a Ferrari, so I suppose it only half counts.

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   I don’t get the impression that many 14-year-olds these days have much interest in cars – at least not compared to when I was growing up. Maybe getting a driver’s license or a first car isn’t the late-adolescent rite of passage that it used to be.
 
   I figure that’s mainly because kids these days aren’t being sold on the idea of desiring cars like the kids in my generation were. The Marketing Machine has shifted its gears, it seems. Other things are being sold to today’s kids instead. Mostly electronic things that require monthly subscriptions and upgrade fees that’ll have to be forked over like clockwork, forever and ever. I guess that’s seen as a much better money-making scheme than the one where kids are encouraged to save their pennies so they can buy their own car one day.
 
   I understand the basics of the game that’s being played out. Cars are getting the old squeeze, getting recast as antiquated representatives of a bygone era – noisy, greasy, smelly machines produced on assembly lines in giant industrial factories that are no longer the approved symbols of American know-how and progress. Nowadays, we’re told, digital electronics and software are where it’s at. Yankee ingenuity is now being associated with Geek Squad types who are burning up their retinas and carpals writing code for new data mining technologies. Dirty-oil-change fingernails aren’t cool anymore. Clean, sanitized hands are what you want when you’re tinkering with touchscreens.

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    But wait. What about electric cars? Kids must be kinda into them, right?
 
   Electric cars are definitely on the way, and they definitely have my spidey senses tingling. I’ve been wondering about them for quite a while now, wondering if they’re good or if they’re bad. By saying that I don’t mean that I think that some inanimate thing can be inherently good or bad. What I’m really wondering about is the effect they’ll have on people’s souls.
 
   I’ll admit that I don’t yet have all the edge pieces that’re needed to complete the electric car puzzle. But I’m getting there. Here’s one part that’s becoming clear to me: Electric cars might be the death rattle of the automobile industry as we know it. I sense that things are about to change in a big way.
 
   On the surface it may feel like the electrification of cars is just an example of ordinary technical progress that'll maybe help green up the planet or something. Or that maybe it’s just a gimmick to make cars cool and attractive, like tail-fins were in the 1950s. You can almost hear some car company bigwig saying, “Let’s jump on this here digital bandwagon, Jimmy. We need to make our cars more gadgety so we can snag the youth market. I'm thinking 'iPhones with wheels' here. You know, we gotta spice it up, think outside the box, asap.” This might be the gist of the thing.  But I suspect the motivations go a little deeper than tail-fin tech (too obvious) or the green angle (likely a ruse).
 
   Regardless, I’m going to place my bet that electric cars will have a surprisingly short run after they descend upon us in earnest. Maybe less than a decade. And then they’ll be gone. Here’s two reasons why I think this:
 
   First, there’s just no getting away from the damn machinery. Electric cars can’t help but continue to represent all the things that Americans are now being taught to despise – factories, industry, wheels, rubber, grease, etc.  What I mean is this: You can take the gadgetry out of cars, but you can’t take the cars out of gadgetry. Because of this, I bet people will continue to lose interest in cars – at least cars as we’ve come to know them. So the consumer market for what we now think of as cars might wither and die on the vine, whether we’re talking about electric cars or not.
 
   Second, electric cars will be irresistibly easy to automate. So, after a brief run at being somewhat recognizable as vehicles that people can actually drive, my guess is they’ll quickly begin to mutate into self-driving taxis and the like. Cars will become different animals.

   I guess some people look at these emerging “autonomous cars” and see a brilliant, hi-tech future. “No more traffic jams! Hooray! I won’t be burdened with having to drive, so it'll let me do more work on my way to and from work! Hooray!”
 
   I look at these things and see embarrassing little clown wagons.
 
   They’re also so damn cutesy-cute that I find them to be slightly menacing. Like Pokémon characters or Hello Kitty.
 
   Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble here – no pun intended – but I just don’t see a future where kids will hang posters on their bedroom walls depicting these things, whether Christie Brinkley’s involved or not. Furthermore, I doubt that people will be encouraged to actually own these little zip-zips. Instead, I bet they’ll be considered to be a part of some weird, shared resource. In order to have access to them, I bet people will pay for monthly subscriptions and upgrade fees that’ll have to be forked over like clockwork, forever and ever.

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   This brings to mind the main thing that worries me about today’s youngsters’ waning interest in cars: I’m worried that by giving up on oily, old machinery, they’re unknowingly surrendering their freedom of mobility.
 
   Shoot, one of the biggest reasons I was champing at the bit to have my own car when I was growing up was that I’d be able to hop in, fire ‘er up, and drive off to somewhere where my parents weren’t. To me a car represented the freedom to go wherever I wanted to go, whenever I wanted to. If I felt the urge, I could drive all the way up to the lake and go fishing. I could drive over to Hawk’s Nest and buy some M-80s. I could go across town to Northview High and try to catch a glimpse of Heather Heaven. Heck, I could keep heading west until I hit the goddam Pacific Ocean. The possibilities were endless.
 
   Why don’t today’s kids desire to go anywhere, I wonder? Is it because digital electronics have hoodwinked them into thinking they’re already going places?
 
   If that’s the case, God help ‘em when the clown wagons come.
 
– O.M. Kelsey