Future of motorsport

[Graham]

So what are we going to be watching in, say, 20 years time? Are we all going to drool over whining electric cars, analysing the different battery acids and whatnot?

Is that going to be ****, or if it's still competitive racing won't it matter?

Do you think we'll look back on the 90's like we do on the 60's/ 70's and sigh?

Will my beloved TVR no longer exist, forced into general engineering because of soaring fuel costs and ecological concerns?

Is the age of the supercar really dead?

Will there come a time when the historic cars will finally be consigned to a museum (or worse!) because the days when they could be run at speed will have passed? Is that a bad thing?

What is going to happen when the world's final reserves of fossil fuels are not worth tapping? Will the great Ferraris, Astons, Jaguars and so forth be converted to some other fuel, signalling the last encore for some of the sweetest music known?

[Graham]

Will we start nodding and grinning approvingly when looking at a lovely set of batteries and motors in some automotive slug? Is it right to criticise cleaner and more efficient fuel sources because they don't have that rumble or growl we remember from 'the old days'?

Worryingly, will boy racers go round playing a mangled recording of a Ferrari howl as they silently drift by in their Cold Hatches... "InductionMotorsport" emblazoned up the side (even though they've never been to a circuit)???

[Graham]

If petrol-fuelled cars disappear from our tracks and roads, will the next generation dismiss them because they have never experienced them, much like some people now do not understand the attraction for pre-1930's cars (hey, I've been guilty of that a few times myself)?

Does it really matter if they do?

[TimD]

One thing I find reassuring - even if the petrol runs out, you can synthesise fuel from coal, so there's no need to rip the racing engines out just yet. There's enough coal about for at least three centuries.

Of course, it's expensive, so we might find ourselves priced off the road before we are legislated off.

I can still see myself in fifty years time, going to historic-car races, watching the Astons and the Bentleys, and telling anyone who is interested that "they really don't make them like they used to".

I expect that a lot of very familiar shapes will be utterly extinct. Having seen a scrapyard wagon this week with an '87 Volvo 360 and a '91 Granada Scorpio on the back, not wrecked, just rusty and worn out, I reckon that the family car of the last two decades will be utterly gone and forgotten before anyone thinks to save any of them.

And the vintage Bentleys will still be thundering around, with their meccano and girder technology, and revelling in a 70% survival rate, and people too young to remember a Ford Orion will wonder why we ever changed the way we built our cars.

[Mackmot]

If we have th coal supply for about 300 years then by the time that starts running out Im sure we will be living on new planets and have virtually unlimited supplies of oil

[Graham]

Do you have any more info on how fuel can be synthesised from coal - I mean, chemically or whatever?

Could we, because coal is a little easier to dig up than oil and we have quite a bit in this country, manufacture our own fuel one day and so perhaps the cost of running the old cars much less??

[Neil C]

Since the wheel was invented, we have always found a way to compete with each other.

No matter what form transportation takes in the future, or whatever is used to power it, some crazy guys will figure out a way to race against each other.

I think it's part of being human, and pity on us if we ever stop.