[Hachiroku]

From Autoweek today:

By MARK VAUGHN

Granted, this year's Tokyo auto show was something of a disaster. Floorspace once occupied by Ferrari and Aston Martin was given over to (I am not making this up) Kanack Praning Corp., and the car enthusiast's favorite, Nam Yung Lighting Corp.

The show lacked the international flair of the 1991 Tokyo show that debuted the Audi Avus, and the six shows after which trickled out the debuts of the Nissan Z and then the GT-R. Plus, more importantly, this year's Tokyo show lacked the traditional Audi free lunch, leaving hapless freeloading journalists to try out the official show free lunch upstairs, which wasn't all that bad and even included chop sticks. But I'm straying from my point.

You'll read the particulars of the show--the Lexus LFA, the Toyota FT-86, the Daihatsu DecaDeca--here and in AutoWeek magazine. I am not here to rehash all of that. I am here to tell you what it all means.

It means the end of the world.

I know, that comes as a shock. You were hoping the end of the world could hold off at least until the end of the 17th season of So You Think You Can Waltz With the Weasels and America's Next Top Self-Absorbed Anorexic.

Well, tough. It'll be over soon. At least the car-lovers part of that world.

"But Vaughn," you bleat, "on what do you base this hyperbole? Remember, you've been wrong before. When you were starting your own religion, I donated that $500 to the Church of the Everlasting Vaughn and not only did it not go anywhere, but it wasn't even tax-deductible. By the way, am I ever going to see any of that again?"

Nevermind that.

I'm talking about the end of individually piloted means of transport. Cars. I have been all over Japan for the last week and I haven't driven anything. Yet I managed to get from Tokyo to Mt. Fuji and back; down to Suzuki's new plant in Hamamatsu, where I saw more robotic spot welders than I had imagined; out to Makaharu Messe and to and from the Narita airport, which ain't exactly walking distance. I rode the rails or took the bus.

Similarly, in a previous life when I lived in Europe, I found it was just as easy to take the train or the bus as it was to drive, even when I had both means of transport available to me. New Yorkers, you know what I'm talking about.

There are 12 million people living in Tokyo not far from where I sit right now, and probably almost that many who come into the city every day to work in faceless office buildings and type pointless bureaucratic forms. From what I have seen of the city and of this part of the country, I cannot imagine all of those people driving individual cars on freeways and then trying to find somewhere to park them.

Wait, yes I can. I live in Los Angeles. L.A. is daily traffic hell. Any poor sap unlucky enough to commute during rush hour in L.A. is a slave to the 405.

Unlike Europe and Japan, we in the United States are still expanding into a frontier. Westward ho! Europe and Asia have reached the edges of their petri dishes. They have realized that everybody driving their own cars would be a mathematical and physical impossibility. You'd hit a traffic jam at the end of your driveway.

But we in America, our frontier is running out. Outside of L.A. there is desert. Tract homes made a valiant effort to carpet the desert between L.A. and Las Vegas but gave up when even Angelenos realized that they didn't want to do that. Short of paving Nebraska and replacing the corn with stucco, we too may be reaching the edges of our frontier. It was a fun 400 years, but now the party's over and it's time to try and live together peacefully, without road rage. That means cars are on the way out.

Sometime. I don't know when. We're in some sort of bizarre transition right now that could last a decade or it could last 25 years. We don't have to give up our cars yet, and we're still acting as if we can have all of them we want and drive 'em whenever we feel like it and ain't nobody gonna tell us different. You can have my carburetor when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

But it's changing. So go out there and enjoy it now. While you can. Go buy a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and drive the tread off it.

Hurry.

Curious what everyone's thoughts are to these types of predictions about the end of the era of cars. It seems like people have been saying this forever, yet people rely on cars as much as before.