Fuelled by passion
SOME say humankind’s transition from hunting and gathering to farming marks the greatest social revolution in the history of our species.
They say this revolution between 10,000BC and 2000BC was the catalyst for modern civilisation.
Others suggest the Industrial Revolution in Britain a couple of hundred years ago was key to who we are today as it brought with it mass production and massive wealth.
Others consider contraception or feminism or civil rights or countless other social movements the main transformers.
To my mind, there is one invention that has changed our species and the planet more than any other.
Nearly all of us have one or more of these devices, and our lives are shaped by them.
Governments spend fortunes on infrastructure to enable them.
These contraptions elicit deep emotion in many, are central to our lives and relationships, and are intrinsically tied to personal freedom. I am talking about cars. When my son was a little boy, I was determined to be gender neutral with his toys. If he wanted dolls or pink ribbons, he could have them.
The minute he saw a toy car, however, he was transfixed. He learnt their names: Fewawi, Lamengeeni, yoot and twuk.
He parked them in imaginary garages and raced them on imaginary tracks, all with his lips pursed to make the burbling noises of an idling engine and gear changes, and screeches for cornering at speed or hard braking.
I was the same as a boy and so was my elder brother.
Even today, a YouTube video of a 1968 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale or a 1971 Lamborghini Miura SV or a 1985 Lamborghini Countach 5000 QV or a 1996 Maserati Shamal gets me unreasonably excited.
I love the aesthetic of the design, the tension between straight lines and curves that has been so well explored by the two most famous Italian coachbuilders, Bertone and Pininfarina.
I love the sound they make and the sensation they give as they accelerate, corner and brake. I am fascinated, perhaps even besotted.
This is despite knowing that automobiles are a major cause of greenhouse pollution and potentially lethal on the road, and the fact so many people over the years have reminded me with a wag of their finger that “it’s just a car”.
Enthusiasts like myself are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact of cars on our lives. Cars determine where we live, where we go and the design of our homes, neighbourhoods, suburbs and cities.
How many millions are spent each year on multistorey carparks, garages, highways, guard rails, streetlights, fuel, repairs, servicing and making cars?
Imagine the dollar value of the industry if we used one of those magical flow-on-effect analyses that are wheeled out whenever someone wants to build a pulp mill or a mine or a shopping centre. Globally, it would be astronomical. Millions upon millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars.
Cars give us autonomy. They enable complex family relationships. Would modern Christmas Day celebrations be possible without cars?
Remove cars from your life and could you live and work where you do or maintain your relationships or enjoy your recreations?
Cars have dramatically altered the landscape. Roads push deeper into the Great Unpaved Frontier. There has been an explosion of all-wheel drive vehicles that can take people in air-conditioned, leather-lined, hermetically sealed comfort to tracts of wild country that were once the domain of only of the fittest, most intrepid explorer.
The automobile is so successful that the breadth of its social impact is unfathomable because it is so essential to our lives as to be indistinguishable from them: the ultimate “you don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lose it” scenario.
Cars face challenges — from cost implications of peak oil, when demand for fuel outstrips supply; to the consequences of greenhouse gases; to the road toll; to the development of driverless vehicles.
Anyone trying to predict their future must factor into the equation that there is something primal about humankind’s attachment to these metal jalopies, something that will not unstitch easily.
My grandfather refused to have a car. He used to say that people should live within walking distance of work, and he did until the day he died.
But Grandpa was different. He played Wurlitzer organ to silent movies as a young man in London, uprooted his family to migrate to Australia as a Ten-Pound Pom, smoked rollyour-owns in the bath and pipes in the lounge room, and designed amazing things as a draughtsman. He was his own man.
At his feet, however, me and my brother leafed through the pages of a book, like so many children, ogling the sleek lines of a Lancia Stratos and dreaming of the day a gleaming red one with gold wheels would be parked in the garage.