Autos: A Step Back into Nostalgia
Austin Healey 3000. Source
When I was a university student, sports cars were very popular and it seemed that only the British made them. There were various classes of these cars, from simple and basic to luxurious and expensive, but something for everyone and for every budget. None were electric in those days.
The first layer consisted of the MG Midget and the Austin-Healey Sprite. Cute, simple, very basic, very slow, and very affordable.
MG Midget. Source.
Austin-Healey Sprite. Source.
The next layer consisted of the Triumph TR-3, the MG-A, and the Austin-Healey 100. They offered maybe 70% more appearance, performance, and price.
Triumph TR-3. Source
MG-A. Source.
Austin-Healey 100. Source
In a class by itself for elegance, performance and price was the Jaguar XK-140
Jaguar XK-140. Source
Jaguar XK-140. Source
The next layer in time and space were the Triumph TR-4, the MG-B, and the Austin-Healey 3000. Another increase in cute, in performance, and in price. I had an Austin-Healey throughout my university days, and I have to say I dearly loved that little car.
Triumph TR-4. Source.
MG-B. Source
Austin-Healey 3000. Source
As always, in a class by itself for elegance, performance and price, was the Jaguar XK-E, the envy of everyone.
Jaguar XK-E. Source
In days gone by, cars were more personal, an expression of one’s personality, something that seems almost impossible today. The range of autos, of kinds of autos, of features and appearance, seems to have been much greater in the past than exists now. Today, to a casual observer, all cars look the same. Any differentiation is almost without appreciable consequence.
Think of airlines today. To a casual observer, all airliners look identical, and similarly in terms of passenger experience. I have flown on most every recent version of Boeing and Airbus, and nothing stands out in my mind as more desirable or better than anything else, and as true for business class as for economy. All flights are painful today. It wasn’t always like that.There was a day when flying was a pleasure, with considerable differences in airplanes and features. The old Lockheed Electra was a delight for a passenger. The Lockheed 1011 was a pleasure to fly in, at least in first class, as was the Boeing 747. There are no such choices today. The private jets are a bit better, but they too are becoming homogenized.
Autos have gone this same route, where they all seem to be converging into a kind of homogenized, boring nothingness. Private transport is being commoditised in a way that never happened before, and it seems foolish now for auto manufacturers to produce so many brands and so many models of each brand when the only differentiation is superficial. People are being offered hundreds of different choices of the same. It would make more sense for everyone to simply produce a small, inexpensive city car like the BYD Seagull or the Roewe Clever, for one person, one child, and a few groceries. And a second kind of sedan for the family or a group of friends. The vast proliferation of models available today appears increasingly pointless the more one thinks about it.
It seems that an era of personal transportation is taking its final breath, its time on earth having come to an end. Cars are becoming more like the rental bicycles every year – just a simple commodity with no useful differentiation – and no such differentiation required. It is just a bicycle. Simple transportation to take us from here to there, and be forgotten. There was a time when bicycles were also a reflection of personality with much differentiation among brands and models, but this is gone too, or at least rapidly disappearing.
I don’t believe this trajectory can change now. It may be that this sameness is a natural social progression that cannot be prevented, a kind of natural evolution of personal transportation into a simple commodity. One conclusion is that vast portions of humanity will have to find other methods of personal expression. Either that, or we will ourselves become homogenized with a boring sameness. I fear the latter trend is more likely.
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
2186604556@qq.com
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Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon
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