Automotive Escape

Podcast Episode: 0268
Why do we use cars to escape the world?

​     Discover how automobiles have been more than just a mode of transportation but at gateway to freedom and personal exploration. This episode transports you through time, from the age of horse-drawn carriages to the dawn of motorized vehicles, as we explore how cars have always been a symbol of freedom. We 

​journey through the evolution of the automobile as a means of escape, a refuge from the mundane, and a catalyst for spontaneous adventures. With stories from my past and reflections on how cars continue to offer mental relaxation—even as autonomous technology becomes increasingly prevalent—this episode is a loving tribute to the timeless allure of the open road.

​         Going out for a nice cruise is always a great escape from reality, and it's essentially one of the reasons why the automobile industry is here. The automobile industry allowed us to escape from all the day-to-day grind. It made things easier. Today we just look at it as just another part of life. It's a necessity. We use it to get from place to place, but in all reality it's still just an escape for the rest of us. We can use it to help shape our minds, to blow off some steam and just let your mind go blank. I used to do it when I was in college. I had trouble going to bed. Sometimes I'd just hop in my car and go for a drive. I could be gone for 20 minutes, I could be gone for two hours, but I would just do it to escape everything else. To this day, the automobile provides us with that escape. But the onslaught of autonomous technology and AI coming in, how much longer can we use the automobile to escape reality? Well, today, AutoLooks is going to take a look at how we escaped reality. The automotive industry in the past. Industry in the past.
 
       Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast. I'm your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by check it out. Read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all car companies from around the globe all available in one centralized location, that is the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group or distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. 

​       So, like I said in the intro, the automobile has essentially provided us with escape.  How many people back in the days of horse and buggy would just in the middle of the night, getting a fight with their spouse, or just needed some time to go and think hop in our horse and buggy and just go? No, we didn't do that a whole lot. We would hop on our horse and go for a ride, but because we had so much to do, we didn't have a lot of free time. But when the automobile came around, it was essentially created for leisure. The automobile was a brand-new luxury and it provided for the select few that had the money to be able to afford one the ability to be free. We can go out and see the world. At a time when there weren’t roads everywhere and you can access nearly every place, the automobile provided us with an alternate means to get there Before we hopped on the back of an actual Mustang, the horse and rode out into the distance, climbed mountains and traversed our great countries.
 
        The automobile, through its first 30 years, essentially provided that to us. From the 1800s to the early 1900s, the carriage essentially just the motorized carriage of the automobile provided us just with a little leisurely way to get from point A to point B. Some of the rich people were able to use it and didn't have to have a stable at home. They didn't have to have horses, they had something with horse power where, at the end of the day, they could park it in a covered shed and just leave it there. They didn't have to feed it; they didn't have to take care of it. Nothing provided an easy escape from reality. Hop in your automobile and just go for a drive into town, enjoy the wind in your hair, and that's what we did all the way up until roughly the mid-20s.
 
       Yes, the days of the roaring 20s started to take shape and started to give more people the ability to explore the world and with that, using our Model T's or any other vehicles we were provided at that point in time the old Renaults, Peugeots, Opel’s, Vauxhalls, anything we were able to go out and see the countryside, drive from here to there. Roads were becoming more prevalent. With that, we needed to find a new use for this great technology. The automobile was providing extra time for us. It didn't take hours to go places; it took mere minutes. When I was in college, walking from my girlfriend's house to my house, I did it once it was over an hour and yet I could drive that in an automobile in about 10 minutes. Hour walking 10 minutes in a car, that's 50 extra minutes. What would I do with that? Well, for me, I would just go for a drive. See, like I said in my younger days, when I hadn't had to drive back and forth to work and bring the kids here and there, and go pick up this, go do that. I enjoyed my automobile. I would hop in the car and just go for a random drive around, and that's what people were starting to do in the 20s. They started having that time. They can go for a drive and with that, two-door automobiles started to enter the marketplace.
 
        Yes, the original sports cars, coupes and cabriolets were essentially our first escape from the world around us, where sedans or the automobile at that point in time, as it was called, an automobile or pick up escape from the world around us where sedans or the automobile, at that point in time, as it was called, an automobile or pickup trucks from the daily grind were just what you used to get back for the work. But if you had the ability to get yourself something more fun, you have a third vehicle or, in some cases, second vehicle. You would get something like a little two-door sports cupel. Gotta remember this is back in the times of the rumble seats yeah, pop-out rear seat on the back of your automobile. You and your girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other can hop in that vehicle and just go for a drive. You don't have to worry about any of the cares of the world. As long as your automobile was up to code and didn't break down on you, you can explore the backwoods. You can explore the backwoods; you can crisscross the country. And from that by the 1950s, people started using the automobile to escape their lives. 

​        Between the 30s and 40s the automobile essentially the escape from reality kind of dwindled. In North America we had the Great Depression and in Europe the onslaught of war. In other markets Asia, Australia times weren't good. The economies were slightly crumbling. People were just keeping their automobiles together just so they can make life a little bit easier. So, at that point in time, for nearly two decades our escape from reality wasn't there. But just before that, big products like a Corda 12 or a Duesenberg movie star rolling up in these amazing vehicles just made us think what would life would be like if we could drive around in one of those? It would be amazing. That's such a great looking vehicle, wow, I would love that. But unfortunately, with what happened in the world and what was going on in the economies around the globe, the 30s and 40s started disappearing from us. And it really wasn't until the 50s that we had another amazing time.
 
       And in the 1950s a vehicle came back from the war and since a lot of countries started manufacturing this for their own military, civilian use, started getting into it. And with the introduction of radial tires by the mid-30s the standard automobile wasn't able to go anywhere you wanted to. It basically had to stick to a road. You had a set area. It was like a train. You could only go where the road went; you couldn't just go off-road into the backwoods.
 
       Well, after the Great War, something new was here. A little company, bantam, with partners from Ford and Willy's, created the Jeep. Willy's eventually bought out Bantam and created the Willy's Jeep and with that gave birth to the sport utility vehicle, or back in those days, the Jeep days, because it really wasn't until the 1990s that we started calling them SUVs. To this day I don't. I don't like using the anagram Sport utility vehicle, I just call them utility vehicles. I have CUVs, ALVs, but the other ones are just utility vehicles. What's so sporty about them? But the original Jeep gave us the ability to explore the world once again, with all these veterans coming home and the economy starting to turn around and starting to boom yet again.
 
       Families had two vehicles. You might have a station wagon as your family vehicle and a convertible or a coupe, or, in these cases, some people had Jeep. You had a vehicle to go out and escape your everyday life. After a hard, long week of work, you needed to escape it. You needed to unwind. You needed to go out and have fun, with television just starting to come around and not a lot of stuff on TV. Besides sitting at home and reading, going outside and playing, there were tons of things to do and see in the world without being connected, literally being plugged in like we are today with our phones. We had to leave the confines of our own house to go out and see the world around us. To escape our realities, we had to use our automobile to provide an escape for us and really, until handheld devices came out, the automobile was the ultimate escape from reality. But at the original point in time, like we said, in the 50s, we only had sports cars, we had convertibles, we had coup.
 
      The creation of the supercar, essentially the Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing, helped breathe new life into a new tier of the automobile world. It started giving us the ability to take street cars to the racetrack. Now, up until now we've been able to do that because essentially every racing series around the world is created and operated by standard vehicles, hence the term stock car. It's a stock car race. There's nothing stock about their vehicles. Now, hell, it's being changed even from stock car to stock utility vehicle now, with Chevrolet wanting to get the Blazer into it. Yeah, that just kind of pisses me off, but really by the end of the 70s and into the early 80s stock cars weren't stock cars anymore, were purpose-built race cars. So essentially, they should have changed their name. But these were vehicles that were able people were able to get. Bring home the 300 SL provided a racing car for your garage, it created more fun at night, and that moved into the 60s. 

       The 60s were a day where the automotive escape really flourished, with the creation of vehicles like the 911, the Mustang, the GTO and even the original Lamborghini Countach. Yep, it was originally developed in the 60s, but at that point in time they had the Miura, supercars, performance cars, muscle cars, sports cars, grand tours. The industry was exploding with all of these great vehicles that would help us escape reality. By the 1960s everyone was able to escape it and the automotive world literally blew up. By the 50s we created our interstate systems in the United States and the M motorways in Europe. We were building a network for all of us to use and by the 60s we started utilizing that. We used the big highways as an escape from reality. We can go out and travel faster than we ever could before. We can go to racetracks because there were more of them, with big block V8s and these muscle cars.
 
      The muscle car era was upon us and the baby boomers were starting to hit the market. John Zachary DeLorean, John Z. DeLorean the man behind DeLorean had an amazing idea to put a big engine in a small vehicle, essentially cram a V8 underneath the hood of a Pontiac Tempest. Lots of power in a small package. This would provide the ultimate automotive escape for the baby boom generation, as they would use the muscle car era to escape their daily life. And this escape would be so prevalent by the early 70s In Detroit, Michigan.
 
       A police officer by day and one of the number one mysterious street racers at night, the Black Ghost Challenger, essentially showed the ultimate escape from reality. If you haven't heard of the Black Ghost Challenger, it's a 70 Challenger 340 pack, pure black. It was owned by a police officer, drove around by day and handed tickets out for people for speeding at night. He escaped the realities of upholding the law to do what he loved most to get behind the wheel of his Challenger and race the public Never show himself Essentially would become an underground street racer and fade into the night. Now, it really wasn't until the 90s when this was found out and his son actually found out about the car and the history behind it and he had to ask why did you do it? I had to escape. I had to show my true colors and do what I truly loved. Muscle Cars really provided that for us the original escape.
 
        You've got to remember when you first enter the automotive market at a young age. Most of us not all of us, because, trust me, I can attest to the people that are on the other side you know, don't do this, but most of us feel the freedom when we grab the keys for the first time and we're old enough that we can go out on our own and naturally, with that it's just like being in high school and we've got to show off to everyone how much better we are than them. So, street racing essentially is part of that culture. Originally developed in California in the 50s. Hot rodding gave birth to what later would become the muscle car drag races. Now I got tons of stories I could tell you about people in my family or even myself involved in this, the muscle car era, or even just plain out, street racing. We all did it and it was one of those things that you just have to sit back and go. Yeah, that was fun, that was great while it lasted. Well, the good times are over now. 

​        By the time I hit college my home province in my home country she kind of did away with all of that. Now, with going 50 over, you lose everything. A lot of us hung up our keys and found a new way to have fun. But back in the 70s we didn't have to worry about that. We had the muscle cars big, burly power that would take us from point A to point B as fast as possible. We'd look great doing it. Go to a high school parking lot in the 70s. It looked completely different than today, where today there's not a ton of vehicles, there's more, you know, e-bikes and electric vehicles or hybrids or even just the people who walk, because it's healthier. Now, back in those days, even if you got to drive your parents' car, you were glad if your parents had a Chevelle wagon. If they didn't, then you worked your ass off and you got that GTO, you got that mustang and you came to high school in one of the coolest cars ever because, after spending all day in the mind-numbing school, you had to release, you had to get out. I don't care who you are, everyone has something they do after work or school to unwind.
 
       At one point in my life, before I had kids, I used to come home and unwind in the weirdest way. I would sit down with my dog and watch SpongeBob. Doesn't seem so weird, does it? No, we just. I come home, give me the 30 minutes to sit down, watch SpongeBob intelligent like 30 minutes, because it was standard cable tv back then with commercials. After that, you know I'll switch the work mindset off and regular Everett will be back. But I needed that to unwind. The amazing part about that is that dog that I watched SpongeBob with. We did it every day after I was done work and that's how I escaped.
 
        Driving home through a residential suburb to my house wasn't relaxing enough. I wasn't out on the big highway like I am now After work. Now I get out on the highway and I can do 100k, no problem in and out of people. No, I get to one little area right at the end where the four lane ends and it turns into a two lane after the traffic light and it's like a drag strip and I can get out all my aggressions in one spot. Granted, I'm the first guy out front, so I have that.
 
        I use my automobile to escape from my bad day. By the time I come home in the 20-minute drive back then watching SpongeBob, and the day we actually had booked to bring my dog in and have actually not my dog, it was actually my wife's dog, but naturally all dogs become my best friend. I spent the whole day with him on his last day, just hung out watch movies. I watched Marley and me and right before we had to take him to be put down, SpongeBob came on him and I were going to watch it one last time before I brought him in to have him put down. That dog must have truly loved me because he passed away right before the end of the episode, like literally just we watched the episode and it's like he was at peace this is happiest place and he just let go. I know what does that have to do with the automotive escape, but that's how I escaped reality. I drove a stick shift to work in back in those days, so it's fun driving through, but in a residential neighborhood where I can do between 50 and 60 kilometers an hour and that's it not so much fun, so I had to find a different way to avoid. 

​        Now, after the 70s, we hit the gas crisis at the middle of the decade and big power starts to retract. We start losing it because of the high cost of operating and refueling those vehicles. Four and six cylinders start making their way in and people start seeing that Japanese know how to deal with this. Well, with that, Japanese sports cars that have been around forever start coming out of the woodwork. By the 80s and into the 90s, coupes and sports cars reigned supreme. The muscle car had its second coming by the mid-80s and up until the mid-90s, where it came back, people loved the big V8. We still love the growl and the grunt of it, but the import scene was just taking the world by storm.
 
        We used those sports cars, like I said, by the 80s and into the 90s, going to a high school. Yet again, the parking lots were filled with all these amazing little two-door vehicles. It was our escape. We had to break free. We had to get out there. Sure, we still had SUVs and four-wheel drive trucks that go way out in the bush. But why do we need to do that? Most of us grew up having to go camping. Why would we get an SUV to go off in the middle of the bush to go camping? We had to do that every summer with our family. No, we just wanted to go out and have an amazing drive on the fun back roads.
 
       But by the end of the 90s those markets started disappearing. The import scene started showing us that we can make any vehicle look great. Our sedans and wagons can move into this. We didn't care about getting moms everyday Nissan Altima sedan because we knew we can customize that thing to be a show car. Stick shifts were slowly dying out because automatics were more prevalent everywhere. The sports car industry started to retract and people started becoming more homebodies. From airports they go from place to place and that's about it. Road trips were out. The escape of reality was still there, but utilizing your vehicle wasn't.
 
       By this point in time there were so many cars clogging most main arteries and freeways. It wasn't fun. We spent over an hour every day sitting in traffic just to get home. It was a nuisance. The automobile was losing its luster by the end of the 90s sports cars, muscle cars, performance vehicles there were really only four high-end clientele that could afford to truck them to a racetrack to have fun at. For the rest of us, cars weren't fun anymore. There was no escape, because the automotive escape all but dried up. Sure, by this time I still had an escape because in my home city there wasn't tons of traffic and I could still go for a back-roads drive. Tons of back roads which are nice and quiet at 2 or 3 in the morning. Hence the reason why the import racing stream brought upon by the Fast and Furious movie franchise in the early 2000s gave way to all these night races. Now they still go on to this day, but with more heavily policed areas. Street racing is not like it once was, and doing it the risks are way too high now. So that escape is completely gone. 

​       So how do the rest of us escape reality If our roads are clogged and the fun cars are gone? Well, Jeeps, remember that amazing vehicle that came back from World War II that we all started loving near the end of the 40s and into the 50s the Jeep, the four-wheel drive utility vehicle to go anywhere by the teen years, ladder frame, dedicated SUV, like a Chevy Tahoe we're talking all-terrain back roads climb over rock style land cruisers, wranglers and Broncos Vehicles to go anywhere. And living in countries like China with over a billion people and an economy that's growing and original places having to take lotteries to get vehicles, people started realizing maybe the best bet is to get a vehicle that we can escape everything in by having a Beijing BJ40 being able to go to back roads. Is it a Mahindra Thar? Yeah, and the utility world has blown up. It's always been here and we've all thought it was great and we needed it, both becoming more domesticated.
 
       During the 90s, as the crossover utility craze really boomed, the utility vehicles for back roads, buggies, Baja’s really wasn't at the forefront. Companies like Jeep and Land Rover weren't there. They were there, but people didn't think them as top tier. Today that's changed and 4x4s have essentially become our last refuge from the escape of reality from the automotive world. Yeah, my four-wheel drive Tacoma and my previous four-wheel drive Kia Borrego were what drives our quest to journey off the beaten path.
 
        Today, with roads and cities being so clogged, the only place you can escape reality is far away from people. I'm lucky enough to live right at the edge of a major city in a northern section that's just backwoods for hours. I can literally leave my house, go for a two-hour drive where I hardly see any houses or people. I can do it, but this is because of where I live. Somebody living in the city of Toronto, Montreal. They've got to travel for hours to be able to enjoy that. Back roads around them are clogged, little towns are just super expensive and crazy. There's no escape from urban life. But a lot of people, when this has become a new thing, are chasing the northern lights and realizing that I'm from a major city 180 000 people, major city by Canada standards. Okay, when you get to the edge of my city you can see the northern lights. If you have a four-wheel drive, you can venture further into the bush to see them even better.
 
      You could escape the harsh realities of life and escape the world automotive style, and that's essentially what we all need. We need to escape and the automobile is that refuge. It always has been. Before the automobile, our own horse was the only way to go out and explore. Well, not in every place. Sometimes you need a little bit more rugged, different animals for select places, but the horse was mainly our way to get around. Up until the advent of the automobile, the horse, the original Mustang, was the only way to go about it. Today, if you can afford to get yourself a Ford Mustang, you can have that fun too, but only in select areas Because, trust me, there's not a lot of places you can really open up your car anymore.
 
       It's getting kind of sad Even for me back and forth to work. I may be on a long you know a parkway and I can back and forth to work. I may be on along you know a parkway and I can still go faster. But few traffic lights and dim-witted people that do bang on the speed limit or less, and that's just ruined for me. With the introduction of autonomous technology and AI coming into the automotive world, our last chance to escape all of this is here, and utility vehicles are our one last refuge. With lots of cities getting rid of racetracks, police being abundant everywhere and street racing being a jail able offense, backwoods is the only place we can go, which essentially was the first place we were able to go when we escaped the world in our automobile. In all reality, escaping our automobile sometimes is good too, but an automotive escape is so much better. So, in all reality, do we need specific markets so that we can escape the realities of our world with the automobile? 

​      An automotive escape is essential to life, whether it be a vacation, a day trip, hell. Even just an hour to clear your mind after a work day, even just an hour to clear your mind after a work day, utilizing that free space without anyone in it fully for you, it's like having your own bedroom, completely cut off from your entire family. It could be the one step that you need for true enlightenment Because, trust me, some of the greatest ideas I've ever had in my life, some of my original automotive designs, came to me when I was out for a drive. Even to this day, I come up with amazing ideas. I come up with podcast ideas while driving in my vehicle by myself. I could think, and I could escape everything to a refuge that's all mine. So, yes, we still need that ability to escape the reality in an automotive world. The automotive escape is here for all of us, even if we can't afford it the ability to be able to rent vehicles or even go for a cab or Uber ride. You can literally use the automobile to escape whatever is troubling. It's an all reality for life. An automotive escape is what we really need.
 
       So, if you like this podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any of your social feeds or streaming sites that you found the AutoLooks podcast on. Like us, share us, follow us. Click the buttons at the bottom. Follow us. Go to the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all carted around the globe, all available on one select location, the AutoLooks.net website.
 
      And if I went a little too fast for you, like I said before, click the like button at the bottom. Click the follow button at the bottom. Like our tabs, like our social feeds, like all the streaming sites you found the AutoLooks podcast on, from iTunes to PodBean, to Spotify. We're there. The AutoLooks podcast, the AutoLooks podcast, is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, like I said in the beginning, we all need to escape reality with the use of an automobile, whether it be a cab ride, an Uber ride, hell, sometimes just sitting on the bus with headphones on to ignore the world around you. It just allows you to use the automotive world to escape the outside, and automotive escape is what we all need at the end of the day. So, from myself, Everett Jay, the Ecomm Entertainment Group, PodBean.com and the AutoLooks.net website, strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride we're going to have as we escape reality in the automotive world.