Car Culture in a Post-Covid America

 

I read a post  by Dan Stoner this morning in Hemmings  Daily online (https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2020/09/03/the-future-of-cars-is-in-the-culture?refer=news&utm_source=edaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-09-03) that focused on the future of car culture in America. Stoner begins with the statement: "The future of car culture is the culture, itself." It is a comment I have thought about on and off, the entire day. How American culture is transformed by our 2020 pandemic remains to be seen, but I would think that any discussion of the future of car culture or culture in general has to take this event that is as significant as the Civil War or the Great Depression in consideration. Yet Stoner never does this in his thoughts about the future of the car hobby and generational behavior.

Post-Covid America is surely going to be quite different than the country that was on January 1, 2020. We will certainly not be as wealthy by any measure. We will not be as cohesive, our divide exacerbated by matters of race, class, and political ideology. Higher education is experiencing a major traumatic episode, as is the job market. Mass transit will be even further marginalized. Vaccine or no vaccine, this pandemic will be chapter one in perhaps even more dangerous contagious diseases just over the horizon, real or imagined. 

Dan Stoner spends considerable effort in a discussion of Kids These Days (KTD) and their interest in sustaining the auto hobby. His description of the problem and possible solutions is good, but I would argue "old news," stated many times by others during the past few years. It  is a topic often addressed in Haggery Magazine, and in sessions at Historic Vehicle Association meetings held in Allentown.

What is different now is the Covid insult to our culture, including car culture. What Covid has done is perhaps taken our interest in an older technology and render it no longer relevant.  Americans now face challenges -- and especially the younger generation, that is unprecedented. Looking backwards might be a kind of comfort food, but shaping the future does not reside with those who look behind as they plow. There are now pressing priorities: the development and exploitation  of new technologies; the creation of innovative new organizations;  the movement of  the arts in a different directions; and the rethinking spirituality devoid of materialism. 

Hobbies are often connected to specific generations. That is not to say that there is some continuity. But the Golden Age of the Automobile or we may say the love of the automobile may well be over, fatally stricken by an invisible virus.