What does the future hold for automotive enthusiasm?

[Cobra]

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about what the future holds for the automotive industry.

It seems that in the short term at least, disregarding the mechanism by which propulsion will be generated, in the next few years we are set to see GPS controlled speed limits enforced in vehicles. At least in Europe anyway. However, Australia is destined to follow suit.

As cars become increasingly digital, enthusiasm for them will wane. As fast as a Tesla is, once most vehicles are fitted with electric motors, there will be very little to differentiate them from the competition, which will have an affect on the passion that's evoked.

Take ICE-powered vehicles today, for example, and compare them to 10-15 years ago. They're quicker, faster, more refined; and better in every sense dynamically. However, are they more exciting? I'd have to say, probably not. An R35 would destroy any Skyine previously, but the involvement you'd get from pushing an R34 GT-R with a traditional 6-speed cog swapper to its limits would seem, to me at least, much more rewarding.

As another example of where enthusiasm has fallen down the slippery slope is when I drove two cars back-to-back about a nine months ago, and realised that one was much, much better in every sense of the word... except when it came to the enjoyment factor.

I'm talking about a B7 Audi RS4 and a 2018 RS4 TTV6. The new RS4 was an astonishingly quick and beautifully appointed car. The B7 RS4 on the other hand, was a pure driving machine. That V8/manual combo had no hope of keeping up with a TTV6/DSG combo, but I couldn't care less! The B7 RS4 is an amazing machine and one which I'd love to own some day.

But, I digress. I guess where I'm coming from is that, I feel we're on the verge of some of the biggest technological changes in human history. So, where does that leave our passion for the automobile?

Well, that will depend on how quickly the departure is from vehicles being what we associate them to be today (from an enthusiasts perspective) to them being purely a functional, autonomous mode of personal transportation. The scope for enthusiasm will be about as wide as it is for any household appliance. Many will hold on for as long as possible, but the inevitable will eventually overwhelm what's currently the norm.

Some predict that companies like Uber, Google, Amazon and the like are set to change the landscape of personal transporation forever. From fully autonomous vehicles, right through to on-demand services which may even render the need for individual ownership of cars completely redundant. Whatever the future holds, though, I don't see a future where vehicles will evoke any kind of passion at the point when they become fully autonomous.

With that being said, I can see automotive enthusiasts coming together like never before. Some experts predict that motorsport and car ownership in general will become a specialist hobby, akin to horse ownership; participants in motorsport events will engage in activities as do those who currently are involved in equestrian.

The horse and cart was rendered redundant by the advent of the automobile, but the passion for horses lives on today. 150 years ago, learning to ride a horse was perhaps a lot more common place than it is today. Today, people learn to ride a horse because they want to, not because they have to.

In the future, will youngsters brought up in an autonomous vehicle generation, who have no mandate for acquiring a driver's licence, learn to drive antiquated sports cars, purely as a passion to participate in organised track events? Will we see autonomous vehicle carriers carting vehicles to track days, akin to a current day horse person towing their horse float?

I think the future of automotive enthusiasm looks bleak in terms of what we have to look forward to. However, I can see the passion and enthusiasm of the "good old days" of vehicles being a lot more than an appliance to move people from point A to point B, living on for longer than anyone reading this thread will be alive to witness.