Your late night read…
The future is the past (written By Geoff Buys Cars)
You know that moment in every disaster, end of the world movie you’ve ever watched?
There’s the explosion, the bomb, the volcano, the avalanche, and sometimes there’s a man…
The man who’s driving the RV at high speed while the ash and carnage rains down around him.
The man who jumps a Triumph Speed Triple through an exploding car crash, emerging without so much as a singed eyebrow.
The man who escapes a fiery, burny, certain death by driving fast and looking cool with style and panache and a pair of Ray Bans…
Sometimes there’s a man…
and here in 2022 it could be you.
Recent years have given us the literal representation of every action move we’ve ever seen.
All the key players in a good blockbuster have been present – heroes, villains, megalomaniac media moguls, corrupt politicians, war criminals, do-good celebrities, GI-Joe-Public, mobsters, monsters, heroes that turn out to be villains and villains that turn out to be heroes.
If 2018-2022 was a movie, the forest has burnt down, the house has flooded, caught fire, collapsed and been caught in an avalanche; a tidal wave hit in the middle of a draught and now we are at the calm before the climax, the bit in the movie where the main characters are camped out at a military compound finding warm clothes and weapons ready for the big finale…
We all know the volcano is about to blow, so its time to choose your side and stake your claim.
The finale is coming so grab your car keys and run.
The world is falling apart, Olympus has fallen, interest rates are climbing, inflation is the new normal and the cost of living is pretty damn close to outweighing the benefits of doing so.
We’ve had two years of terror and turmoil in the news, preposterous posturing from politicians and ludicrous nonsensical guidelines and laws, a crazy new reality of catch phrase roulette where new and bizarre cultures have sprung up around four-word slogans that sound immensely positive but can’t stand the smallest scrutiny.
Stay with me…
The world has gone mad, the public has turned on the petrolhead and raised pitchforks to car culture, The cult of Greta spells doom for the last bastions of automotive enthusiasm as low emissions zones and spiralling running costs make car fanatics the new outlaws of the Wild West.
Gone are the days of the open road, of living wild and free like Hunter in the 60s, where nothing seemed to matter but driving fast late at night with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested… these days you’re lucky to arrive on time and intact, having survived the traffic torture as potholes and traffic increase in a losing battle of quantity over quality.
The roads are clogged and the cars are expensive, petrol is pricey and it ain’t getting better. Policy has mandated a move to electric which itself requires a suspension of general common sense. Diesel is dirty and petrol is puke but electric, my friend, is the future.
Don’t ask questions, just disengage brains and plug to the mains and for the love of god please nobody mention ‘energy company dividends’.
The dividend is divided but you’re not invited to the profit party that’s happening up top. You’re one of the last, one of the least and you’re still clinging to that pathetic petrolhead hope, clutching the dream of cheap fuel and open roads, holding onto it for dear life as it slips between your fingers with every penny on the litre and ultra low emission zone expansion.
The future is here and it used to be bright, but it’s no longer orange it’s bleak. Smart motorways aren’t, being green can be mean and the revolution will clearly not be televised – at least not on any channels that aren’t officially sanctioned, paid off or sponsored by the main event.
We are strapped to the time bomb, going down hill, gaining momentum and having to pay for the pleasure. The future is bright and it might not be orange but it’ll also be fiery and hot – especially if the only thing to stop us reaching terminal velocity on this out-of-control ride is the external walls of a Ukrainian power station.
Jesus Christ bubba, that got deep…!
Now is not the time for depth, Geoff, let’s leave that to JP Morgan and the Titanic.
Now is not the time to embrace the future, the fraud of electric, the myth of equality and the ever tightening and restrictive embrace of legally mandated freedom.
No, now is not the time for that… you don’t want electrical complexity you want raw internal combustion, you want it turbo charged and wagon shaped, you want angles not curves, like the timeless pyramids we need straight lines and solid build quality not rare metals and short warranties!
What the world needs now isn’t love, sweet love it’s Speed, sweet speed!
The volcano might be raging behind you but keep it in the rear view mirror and you’ll be fine, just keep the tank full, your foot to the floor and your
knuckles white, keep it pinned, keep it open and keep the focus but most importantly – keep the faith.
There are some things in life that are sacred, and sacred things are always worth keeping.
The volvo 850 T5 is to the autmotive world what the 10 Commandments are to religion – a corner stone of a cult, the bedrock of belief.
Yes, you can go faster, smoother, quieter in a modern but this is really a question of SOUL and HERITAGE!
The world is collapsing around you, you’re outrunning the tidal wave of society with your foot to the floor, you are Woody Harrelson outrunning the disaster, Tom Cruise riding through the explosion and how do you see it playing out? The future is in your hands.
Sometimes there’s a man…
A man who sits in the face of a fuel crisis, a world war, a pandemic and a media meltdown, a man who looks at a future of alcohol free alcohol and meat free meat and humour free humour and says ‘nuts to all that’.
Sometimes there’s a man who turns the key in that old fashioned way, cranks over five cylinders, opens the sunroof, lights a cigarette, chews a steak and plants one foot deep into the carpet – £1.71 a litre or not.
Sometimes there’s a man who sees the future, sees that it isn’t bright or orange, and pulls an illegal U turn, racing flat out into the past with the boost gauge screaming ‘no more!’, hell bent on avoiding the oncoming dystopia by going backwards through the vortex at high speed in a turbo Swede with the sunroof open and the stereo cranked and all five cylinders screaming.
The future is bright. The past was better.
Sometimes there’s a man…
Are you that man?
Thanks for reading!