Autonomous cars and more badge bandits - Morley's World 460

By: Dave Morley

Date: 30.01.2022

Dave reckons autonomous cars will remain the stuff of fiction

Let’s talk autonomous cars. Lord, I can hear your eyes rolling already, but stay with me. Now, for starters, it’s obvious for people like you and me, the idea of a car that drives itself is about as useful as cardboard swimming pool. Why one earth would you want a machine to take over an activity we all love so dearly? Indeed.

But here’s where autonomous cars would be an advantage: For the other 99 per cent of the population who A: Hate driving; B: Are no good at driving; and C: Are likely to crash into my lovely little Escort because they can’t control their SUV and have no interest in learning same, self-driving cars would be A Good Thing. Autonomous cars would be better at not ploughing into shopping centres than that same 99 per cent of drongos who think an electronic distributor is a bloke selling stolen laptops out of a HiAce van.

Autonomous driving, a novel idea

Think about it like this: For the devoted amateur baker, Saturday mornings don’t come any better that mixing up a batch of dough, smacking it around for a few minutes (there’s probably a technical term for this process, but whatever) and then baking it in a pre-warmed oven at 200-degrees. The idea of buying a loaf of bread is, for that same person, like a slap in the face. Meantime, for you and I, an automatic bread maker or, even better, a hot bread shop is the best thing since…well, you get the idea.

However, I am saddened to report that widespread use of autonomous cars (and I’m talking about level 5 autonomy here…hands off the wheel, feet on the dashboard, reading a comic-book stuff) is destined to remain nothing more than a concept. In our lifetimes, anyway. This of course, is counter to the promises previously made by every boffin from Elon Musk down, but hey, it wouldn’t be the first time big business has fed us a furphy, would it?

Speaking of which, even the great El Musko has been quoted as admitting that the problems in making autonomous cars a reality were a bit bigger than he imagined. And this is the bloke who built his own space-ship, right? But it’s not just starry-eyed spectrum-dwellers that have led us up the two-lane, divided garden path. In fact, when you think about it, just about everything you’ve been told about autonomous cars is probably at least 50 per cent bum chutney.

Let’s start with the logical source of bullshit and corruption; governments. Now, while this week’s transport minister is all smiles and baby-kisses about the idea of autonomous cars, show me one government in this country, in the last five decades that has had the ticker to actually do anything about nation building. Exactly, so now show me one that would have the stones to actually commit to duplicating pretty much every piece of road infrastructure in the name of self-driving cars. And guess who’ll be picking up the tab for it, fellow tax-payer.

Sticking with our elected boofheads, can anybody name a government or potential leader that would be prepared to cop the flak when it all goes wrong and a driverless B-Double slams through a kindergarten? Bueller. Bueller. Let’s face it, a politician before an integrity enquiry or a Royal Commission, or even parent-teacher night, represents a text-book study in wriggling out of responsibility. When they can’t remember who employed a bunch of bouncers to take control of hotel quarantine (despite the obvious strategy of following the paper-trail, or the 700 people who died as a result) it’s a fair bet the old amnesia will return when it comes time to admit who signed off on self-driving cars.

What will the insurance industry make of this? Surely, there’s a potential net gain if the world can go autonomous and cars suddenly stop crashing into each other and solid objects, but who’s liable for paying out the victims when it goes belly-up?

This is the future in GM’s 1959 campaign

And here’s how you know the whole thing is gonna disappear up its own tailpipe: Remember the Tokyo Paralympics a few short months ago? Yeah, well, as part of the showcasing of Japan’s brightest and best, Toyota supplied a fleet of autonomous busses to get athletes and officials from one place to the next safely and with maximum efficiency. And you would imagine, would you not, that with the eyes of the world on the event, everybody – Toyota especially – would have been doing their level best to portray autonomous transport at its best. Throw in the fact that the Olympic village is a controlled environment and, thanks to Covid, there weren’t even any pesky spectators to get in the way.

So guess what happened? Yep, the autonomous Toyota managed to run over a vision-impaired athlete. True story. If it wasn’t the Paralympics to start with…

So what can we learn here? Well, for starters, it’s that, despite what Silicon Valley keeps banging on about, self-driving cars are not going to happen in the next hundred years. If all tech-predictions came true, I wouldn’t still be waiting for my personal jet-pack to fly me to school.

And secondly, you can’t rule out the human factor. There’s no way to write an algorithm that will take into account meth-heads, thick-heads and good old fashioned dickheads. Hell, even the humble, yet unpredictable kangaroo has the algorithm writers stumped, apparently.

And then there’s this piece of wisdom from Confucius or Plato or somebody like that (but it could have been Stephen Hawking): When ever they make something idiot proof, the universe immediately comes up with a better idiot. True dat.

An issue or two ago, I was yaffling (a fabulous Taswegian word) on about decal engineering. You know, the cars that weren’t much more than a stocker with a set of creative stickers plastered on to make them something special. Well, it seems like that yarn brought back a whole lot of memories for you lot, including one reader, name of Peter:

"Hi guys. Loved the article on those no-hit-wonders, some of which as you implied, are sought after now. A couple of these specials also are the Gemini Gypsy; a panel van which I only vaguely recall, and the CDT or Country Dealer Team cars which were also stickered Geminis. Could never work out why the CDT existed."

| Read next: Decal engineering

Well, Pete, let me fill in some of the detail for you. You’re dead right when you lump the Gemini Gypsy into the decal-engineering crew. I wondered if the name was some kind of subliminal reference to the Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 Mirage album which included the song Gypsy, but the Gemini Gypsy actually beat the album to pop culture a full two years earlier. But the CDT Geminis, well, they were another matter altogether. The work of Jim Faneco (who also engineered the Dick Johnson Grand Prix XE Falcon Turbo) these were a bit more substantial. I’m not sure where the CDT tag came from, but this was also the outfit that built a handful of Commodore turbos back in the 80s. The CDT Gemini got a wicked body-kit (yes, and some stripes) and was available with a twin-carb set-up. There was even the odd one that escaped with a turbocharger bolted to it.

I’ve always been a bit of a rebel when it comes to car colours. Well, when I’ve been able to, anyway; a lifetime of second-hand cars means I buy the right car, not necessarily the right colour when I’m shopping. That’s why the RS2000 is white and not Lime Glaze. Welcome to Pre-Loved World.

Morley likes bright hues

But I have owned a brand-new XR6 Turbo Ute and when I put my order in, there was only one colour it was gonna be: Blood Orange! I know…not everybody’s choice, but like I said, I’m a bit of a wild man in this department. By complete coincidence, the bloke who painted my RA40 Celica (about a dozen years before I bought it) chose that then-new, Falcon colour called Blood Orange, too. Ripper.

My parts chaser is also an off-beat hue; Hothouse Green, and I love it and, while I can appreciate the crisp, just-ironed look of a Wimbledon White Mustang, or the gangsta street smarts of a gun-metal grey Camaro, I’ll take my Mustang in Grabber Orange and my Camaro in Rallye Green Metallic. Black? No thanks. I’ve owned one black car – an AU XR6 – which actually turned out to be two black cars: My first and last. Washing that bugger was like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge; by the time you got to the back, the front was filthy again.

Anyway, what got me thinking about all this was a photo I saw this week of a HQ sedan, and the super-rare (as far as I know) colour it was painted in. Yep, factory-spec Orchid Metallic. Look it up, it’s a lovely, mellow pink with a heap of flake in it and it just looks utterly freakin’ mint. Sounds horrible…looks anything but. It looks best with the black-outs of a GTS and it’s especially monumental on a pano with black Sandman graphics. Okay, so like I said, I’m a bit of a weirdo in this regard. Did I also mention I like the look of a HQ four-door more than I do the coupe?

Orchid Metallic is a Dave fave

The strange thing about Orchid Metallic (apart from me liking it) is that I can’t actually imagine it on anything other than a mid-70s Holden. Great colours should work on similar shapes, yet I can’t even get my few remaining brain cells around the idea of an XB Falcon GT or an R/T Charger in the same colour. The Charger is probably less of a stretch since it came in that hot-pink Magenta which, with R/T black-outs, can look pretty sensational too. Then again, you could get your XA in Wild Plum and I’ve seen XB GTs in Mulberry with silver accents, which is kind of the same. Or at least similar. Kind of. But not exactly.

Perhaps it’s because Orchid Metallic is such an HQ signature I can’t imagine it on anything else. Maybe it’s because it’s such a surprise that it worked on the Holden, that slapping it on anything else would be seen as taking the piss. You know what I mean: When the first grown man got a Monkey Bike registered and rode it to work, it was hilarious. When hundreds of his mates did the same thing, it was just sad.

Here’s the other strange thing: I wasn’t always as keen on Orchid Metallic. As a kid, I liked my HQs in Chrome Yellow (as my dad’s was) or Lina Mint or Purr Pull. But somewhere along the line my opinion changed in one of those flashes of inspiration…like that moment you realise it was the Brunette in ABBA that was the looker all along. That’s Orchid Metallic right there.

WHEEL TUB TIME MACHINE
Okay, here we go again: What’s a piece of advice I would give my 16-year-old self if I could travel back in time? It is this: Never – I repeat, never – attempt to clean the workshop dunny with a high-pressure washer. I know it sounds like pure genius as a concept, but trust me, it’s a bad – I repeat, bad – idea. Ask me how I know…

From Unique Cars #460, Dec 2021

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