"Car trips are bad trips"

"Henry Ford's instrument of democratic liberation has become an oppressive tyrant, imprisoning us"

Link to The Guardian

"... My children regard cars as unnecessary and expensive encumbrances, not the status symbol or romantic attribute they remain for me. Recent US research showed that very few people under 30 considered any automobile manufacturer a 'cool' brand. And those who owned cars would much prefer to keep their smartphone, if required to make a competitive choice between wheeled transport and the electronic type of connectedness.

"But there is poetry as well as pain here. Henry Ford created his gasoline buggy to escape from the deadening tedium of life on a midwest farm. Against all the contrary evidence, cars retain this magical potential to transport the spirit as well as the body. Harley Earl, Detroit's coruscating wizard of kitsch with his repertoire of chrome and pleated Naugahyde, rightly understood that even the meanest car journey should have the intoxicating suggestion of an exotic vacation. It is curious to consider howan instrument of democratic liberation has become an oppressive tyrant, imprisoning us. 

"Roads too have lost their glamour. Movies and rock music glorified some of the world's great roads: Route 66, the Grande Corniche and the Pacific coast highway are part of our collective dreamscape. The delightful and deluded fiction of roads as romance. It is difficult, surely, to experience anything other than terrible bathos on the M25 or the East Lancashire Road."