1 March

What modern car nuts (mostly just guys of middle-age who used cars as a way of defining their social group as teenagers) don’t understand is that an EV is really a GT car. A grand tourer, gran turismo. Cars engineered for high performance, but also luxury comfort, refined suspension, for long distance high-performance driving in great comfort and style. The Mercedes 300SL is a classic car of the genre, with its gull-wing doors. Tesla even use those doors in their Model X. Teslas and most Chinese and Korean EVs in general are really GT cars, though because the motoring press and car nuts are mostly middle-aged teenagers, they don’t even see it and wouldn’t understand it if they could. So often they compare them with sports cars, a completely different category of vehicle. Americans tend to have long straight roads, so their high performance cars have tended to just be huge engines (’muscle cars’) with minimal sophistication in the driving dynamics. That’s also an Oz car nut favourite. Rubbish cars mostly, but like the guys doing the dance routine in Grease, they’re all about teen bonding rather than engineering and driving. Take a Tesla or other modern EV on a long touring drive, and enjoy the feeling of effortless, limitless power and torque, in extreme comfort and superb quiet that even classic GT cars can’t match. They’re the refinement of an art form. And now they’re priced for ordinary people, whereas historically GT cars were for the rich and famous only. A revolution happening right in front of you. Get into it.