DRIVER WANTED
Motoring enthusiast, Wayne Batty vehicles at the Geneva Motor Show.
The art of driving is under attack and hardly anyone is kicking up a fuss. Carmakers have been weeding the manual gearbox from their model line-ups for years now but where is the indignation or the righteous anger?
Sure, go ahead and buy a trendy Manual Gearbox Preservation Society T-shirt, but a bit of Cars and Coffee fashion action is not going to save the job of old Manny Tranny. There is worse to come, too.
Now they are even ditching the steering wheel.and no, as tempting as it is to go there, I am not referring to the recent recall of 1.4 million American market Fords for steering wheels that ‘could detach over time’. Nope, I am talking about cars that steer by lidar, radar, satellite, and blind faith.
At the recent Geneva motor show, while walking around avoiding eye contact with tight-dressed booth professionals and trying desperately not to lick all the amazing new Rover SD1 wannabees and 500 km/h missiles, I counted four ‘cars’ completely bereft of steering wheels. shares his thoughts on some of the These included the Renault EZ-GO, a type of walk-in doctor’s waiting room on wheels; the windowless, and ironically huge, Icona Nucleus; the Volkswagen I.d.vizzion with its holographic dashboard; and an Audi Airbus Italdesign collaboration called Pop.up Next, which is a fully autonomous drone-car hybrid.
Add in the cars with retractable helms, as featured on the Lagonda concept of Aston Martin and the previously shown I.D. Buzz microbus remake of VW, and you have a definite trend. At first I was all gaga over these technical marvels: I mean who has not dreamt about flying a car while wearing VR goggles? But I soon came to my senses and got really angry. Who builds a childhoodwish-fulfilling flying car that you cannot actually drive? This kind of gross violation of the code of the enthusiast should be met with nothing short of outrage. Ok, you are thinking,‘nutjob’ but let me explain.
As a child on the lap of your mum or dad, the first interaction you had with the family station wagon (remember those?) was clamping your tiny mitts around the thin-rimmed, large diameter Bakelite steering wheel. Forget touching the pedals, they would be years of growth away. But the feeling of grabbing the wheel, giving it the old left-right heave and feeling the beast react beneath you was euphoric. You gave the command, and it just obeyed. Later on in life you would get the keys to your first ride and go cruising all over the neighbourhood like a driving god to the soundtrack of Snap’s I’ve Got The Power. Large and in charge, you were captain of the ship and life was perfect.
Will the next generation of children ever know this emotion? Probably not. Already many teens in Europe express little interest in driving, let alone car ownership. Granted, selecting a destination on an app and then being whisked there in a silent, connected driverless pod sounds uber convenient, but it could never hope to match the thrill of driving there yourself. Ironically, our children will probably pick the transit pod with the fastest Wi-fi speed, just so they can play Ridge Racer 12 in multiplayer cloud career mode all the way to the mall.