A version of this article originally appeared in Issue Ten of Gear Patrol Magazine with the headline “The Future Perfect.” Subscribe today
The future is smart. It’s learned to sneak up on us so that we don’t overreact and start lighting things on fire. When the news hit that self-driving cars were not only real but heading our way, fast, we were too busy chasing cartoon holograms on our phones to care much. Our collective response to a sci-fi dream going back a hundred years was a collective, petulant shrug. The future, being smart, chose to reveal itself at a time when we are easily delighted with technology and almost never impressed by it.
But it’s not just autonomy, whenever that comes, that’s changing the car. It’s electrification, battery power with instant torque and dirt-cheap energy. It’s the erosion of the ownership model and the rise of a connected car that can communicate with other vehicles on the road and the surrounding infrastructure. The idea of what a car can be has never been so up in the air, even back when the automobile was first invented.
Most people don’t care. They just want to get to work and back. But the promise of the American automobile has always been freedom — the idea that at any time you can head off into this huge, wild country under your own steam, beholden to no one. Can that dream survive in a rolling computer packed with sensors, constantly monitoring you, relaying not just your location but where you stopped for lunch and what you’re listening to on the radio?
I want to know what we’re trading for it, this safe, connected, convenient, hardworking car of the future, so I’m heading to California, spiritual home of the American road trip. I’ve sourced an old fast car, sleek and elegant and utterly brainless, to drive from LA to Silicon Valley, and the absolute newest, most futuristic vehicle on the market to drive me back. In between, I want a glimpse of what we’re being promised — and what, exactly, we’ll be expected to give up for it.
PART 1: Los Angeles to Fremont
1987 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL
In the sunset days of Reagan’s Morning in America, before Straight Outta Compton and what we know as the internet, when you could still smoke on planes and get shot at the Berlin Wall, a brand-new 1987 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL offered modern amenities like power windows and a cassette player. It came with a large, sturdy German engine and a thin metal key to start it. Safety technology consisted of seat belts, anti-lock brakes and an airbag. At the time, it cost around half the price of a new home in the U.S.