Cars going "Retro"

Hello friends, neighbors, and fellow Newsviners. I have a quesion that I would like to pose for all of you motorheads out there. Maybe you can explain something for me. In the recent spate of commercials for the new crop of automobiles I have noticed a trend toward returning to a "start button" mounted on the dash. What is up with that? When I first started driving the starter button was mounted on the floor next to the gas peddal and was operated by your foot as you fed gas to the carburetor with the accelerator pedal. As time went by this button was moved up onto the dashboard. Eventually it became incorporated into the keylock switch assembly. Then this assembly moved onto the steering column. It continued to reside there for quite a long time and everyone became accustomed to this location because it was easy, convenient, and universally understood..

Now it would seem that we are returning to the dash mounted button. Is there a reson for this change other than simple cosmetics and techno-appeal or is there perhaps a more esoteric basis for such a change? This certainly is not an earth shakingly important question but it does bug me somewhat on a very deep level. LOL My first reaction was that being as how cars all look pretty much alike now days perhaps the manufacturers are trying to find gizmos and trinkets to appeal to and lure in the young folks who seem to worship everything they see in the space oriented sci-fi movies. Obviously Lincoln is doing just that with their commercials. They are quite blatent in their attempts to equate their product with the star wars genre. Others look a bit like the 'start buttons' on some of the arcade games out there. The next thing they might come up with is a windshield hologram that says "game over" when you put it in park LOL. I know that the after market already sells toy lasers and sound effect gadgets that allow motorists to vent their road rage by zapping an offending fellow driver with an imaginary rain of destruction. Are we returing to our childhood?

Actually this would not be the first time that a youth market appeal has been used. I grew up in the days of good old American muscle and the manufacturers worked very hard to find names that emphasized the emotional impact a certain design was meant to evoke. There was Pontiac with 'The Judge,' MoPar's 'The Roadrunner,' and Mercury's 'Marauder.' Yeah those were the days. The name, the sleek styling, the sound it made when you started it up and the feel of raw power when you first pushed down the accelerator produced an adrenaline rush and thrill that is totally gone in today's products. Back then the package delivered from end to end. You could identify any car down to make, model, and year from a block away. I feel sorry for our law enforcement people because when they ask witnesses to a crime of some sort to describe the getaway vehicle their reply is usually "well it was ....(insert color)..., it was roundish, and had 2 or 4 doors, and 4 wheels.

Now virtually all cars look pretty much the same. Little dumplings with wheels. Their names are more often than not an ambivilent assortment of letters and numbers which really mean nothing to a prospective buyer. When you start it up it either is barely audible or sounds more like an angry bunch of bees swarming from the hive to thwart a possible attacker. They often advertise high horsepower ratings but they seldom back that horsepower up with ground pounding torque. You put a couple of heavy bags of groceries in the trunk or a fat kid in the back seat and you lose half of this imaginary horsepower. And God forbid you should turn on the air conditioning. Yawn!!!

Maybe this is the first step toward using fingerprint ID technology to prevent unauthorized drivers from dirving the automobile. This 'step-by-step' approach is how they are selling "On Star" technology to us. First they tout the safety aspects of it then gradually tell us what else it can do like shut down our car remotely or track our vehicles every move or listen in on our conversations as we drive. Oops that is another topic that belongs with the proposed RF-ID implants that have been tested on our pets and soon will be required of people. Did I say Big Brother???? Sorry. LOL.

Really if the automobile industry wants to truly excite and inspire the sci-fi audience it is about time to dust off the turbine technology that Chrysler Corporation developed in the 60s. That inovation was squashed by big oil and our government because it threatened our oil based economy (helloooo). I had the very distinct and unique pleasure of having a ride in one of the road test prototypes thanks to a doctor friend of mine in Anacostia Maryland who had one for awhile. It could be made to run efficiently on anything that could be atomized and injected into the combustion chamber from coal dust, flour, talcum. industrial soot extracted from factory smoke stacks.and liquid combustables of all kinds like alcohol and yes even oil derivatives. It had the added benefit of cleaning the environment by completely burning contaminants like dust, pollen, and pollutants that happened to be in the air coming into the intakes and exhausting breathable hospital pure air and potable water.

True it didn't deliver the high torque and fast acceleration that a Mustang GT-500 or a MoPar Super Bee did but it really sounded neat and was exciting to drive. Once at speed it showed what it could really do though. Andy Granatelli proved that at Indy by lapping the field several times before succumbing to a $25.00 bearing failure. It was so fast that Indycar, Nascar, and other racing organizations banned them from competition. I suspect that there were other factors involved though because racing is, after all, about speed. Seems ludicrous to ban a type of car for being too fast. LOL

Anyway I would like to hear your comments on this article. I will undoubtedly remain a dinosaur in this regard but it would be nice to have some insight on where it is going. The electric cars sound interesting but I am wondering if anyone has thought about what we are going to do with all of the hazardous wastes produced when we start having to dispose of all of these really expensive batteries when they become unusable? To me this seems like just another short term solution that is going to create an even bigger long term problem. We seem to do that a lot LOL.

In any event Happy New Year to all and Vroom Vroom forever.