There’s nothing like an attempted political assassination mixed with reading Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen to make a girl feel unsure about the days ahead. No matter how the days march forward, however, there will be cars.
How do I know there will be cars? Well, just look outside, friend. Plenty of Americans have lived in similarly troubling times and come out all right on the other side. Those people had to imagine a future. Some of them, had to imagine what the cars in that future would look like.
My favorite Car of the Future is the Ford Nucleon, Ford’s nuclear-powered concept vehicle. This little baby inspired the creators of the “Fallout” video games, which is reason enough to love it, but the style, grace and sheer pants-shitting insanity of building a nuclear powered car is why the Nucleon is a legend in my book. Ford presented the Nucleon to the world in 1958, when the cold war was just heating up.
This was a car for the future. A car for the super humans of tomorrow. Ones who would live in peace and who would harmlessly harness the atom, not for war-making, but for more important things, like cruising around in little red coupes with white-wall tires. A comforting thought.
I think the closest thing we have to a future car now might be the Cybertruck (of all things) or maybe one of the more recent cool concepts, like the Nissan Concept 20-23. The DeLorean, of course, and not just due to its fame as a time traveling machine.
What car, from whatever era you want, shouts Car Of The Future to you?