Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

AN HOMAGE: THE END OF LOVE OF THE EXPERIENCING OF DRIVING?

Most people buy exotics entirely for signaling purposes. They certainly do not buy them for utilitarian transportation. But for some minority of owners, the pleasure of driving something terribly powerful, elegant to look at, visceral to command, and mechanically uncompromising is a pleasure in itself.

In an era of commuting, where we often seek to replicate our living rooms in order to reduce the tedium of repetitive driving, or where we augment that utilitarian purpose with consumer status signaling, the pure pleasure of the experience of driving the sports car or the experience of adventure from driving the grand touring car is often forgotten.

We have few places where we can experiment with our sports cars without fear of prosecution, and the world has shrunk so much and become so densely populated, and our roadways so utilitarian, that the grand touring experience has become one of selecting from a set of fixe drives through aging natural amusement parks rather than a means of exploring the world around us, and loving the experience of it.

For many, the signaling that comes from driving a Ferrari is a net benefit. THey attract attention. For some of us, they attract too much attention. It’s painful to come back to your car after ten minutes and find a dent in the hood and fresh droplets of pistachio ice cream on it, because someone who does not know better sat on the car as a photo opportunity.

For that reason, the Porsche truly is the best brand with which to experience the world. They are uncompromising machines. They are durable machines. They’re beautiful machines. And they’re thrilling to drive. And you don’t have to leave them with a hotel valet. You can leave them in a parking lot without worrying that they’ll attract the attention of the impulsive if you want to have an espresso while sitting in the sunshine, people-watching at a cafe.

Much of the world that was explorable with postwar British sports cars is gone. The developed world is too highly populated, and human culture no longer functions in open air of markets and city streets. That postwar exploratory experience today is better found with a Jeep or Land Rover in the developing world. Outside of Los Angeles, the postwar baby boom car culture – cruising – as a means of socializing, is not only impossible but open to prosecution, because it is indistinguishable from criminal surveillance by gangs, or inebriated risk taking by the young. To some degree urban foot traffic in europe is the only way to have that social experience. Online socialization hardly suffices. But the thrill of driving is reserved tot hose people who participate in celebratory rallies like the Gold Rush or Gumball rallies. Rare events that are expensive and orchestrated, not recreational exploratory opportunities to gain insights into and compassion for, your fellow man.

Driving is an expresson of freedom. A gift of modernity: our ability to move outside of our twenty mile radius of possible life experience with ease. A way of touching more humanity that we could without it. It was a privilege. A reflection of a time of rapid change. And what little is left for us, is best experienced not with an exotic which is the focus of your attention, but by a little sports car, where humanity, despite it’s materialistic homogeneity. is the focus of your attention.