m o t o r i ng
D r . k e l l e n s i lv e r t h o r n Dr. Kellen Silverthorn is an automotive writer. He tries to keep one convertible and/or one track-day car in the family fleet.
Resurrection and renewal
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nowing there’s another issue of this More time was liberated as my wardmagazine after a year’s pause offers robe and personal hygiene were COVID some semblance of a nod towards rationalized. Maintaining my mental normalcy. Our individual paths to the new health dictated filling the time vacated by normal will be long, with many twists and those many activities. Mostly I ramped up turns. Like many, I’m impatient for this colpassions already present (better than the lective return journey to gather speed. alternative of Netflix soma). Thinking back to those early COVID-19 I could watch professional racing on TV days of 2020, I was cluelessly optimistic on while working out in the home gym. My what public-space access sim racing rig I had fortuitously upgraded I’d lose, and how just weeks before the pandemic onset, long restrictions and the resultant racing against AI Another big would last. I or my fellow sim-racing enthusi(positive!) story that asts across the globe flirted with has come out of 2020: addictive behaviour. Norway is the first nation to The pandemic was as good ban the ICE-powered car (by a time as any to dive deeper 2025). Here, a map of Tesla into science fiction novels. EV charging stations across Thank God for Amazon, as our the country, including this local library system seemed “supercharger” in inexplicably paralyzed for Mosjøen fjord six months. (Ironically, liquor stores and cannabis retailers didn’t miss a beat.) Sudoku was another time-occupier I resurrected. After exhausting the airport also remember softcover editions I trying to train had lying around, I tranmyself against sitioned to websudoku. touching my face. com, where I could get an It didn’t work. unlimited supply of Goldilocks As the days of restric“just right” difficulty puzzles. And tion became weeks, then with copious solo time, I re-doubled my months and then whole seasons, the stone-sculpting efforts. Yes, I sculpt stone dreary reality of life with the pandemic cars (kellensilverthornsculptures.com), a praccame into focus. One’s social life on hold. tice that’s made me aware of how Non-essential travel embargoed. Nondifferent are the mindsets and compensaessential shopping blacklisted. Dine-in tion of the arts and medicine/dentistry. restaurants closed. Libraries shuttered. Serendipity added a new dimension Gyms padlocked. Hair stylists incommuto my weekly activities. Chance linkages nicado. Even non-emergent health and between my virtual racing network and dental care on furlough. my sculpting connections found me Specific to my situation as an automoworking one day per week at a local auto tive writer, my auto industry media events restoration shop. The cross-pollination of also ceased. My driving instructor gig at tools and techniques between stonethe local track faded to black. Annual racsculpted cars and full-size metal versions ing pilgrimages to Targa New Zealand and has been a revelation. south of the 49th for endurance racing The restoration shop and sculpting were deep-sixed. gigs have kept me thinking about and
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Just For Canadian Doctors Spring 2021
discussing cars. And car fans love to contemplate changes to their family fleet. In 2020, I had wanted to sell my race car but that market was understandably flat. I did sell a roadster that wasn’t getting much use either. Acura kindly rebuilt the engine in my 10-year-old daily-driver SUV. That Acura should now stay in the fleet until its 15th birthday. One of the big global auto stories of 2020 affects my family fleet. During COVID, many OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations legislated a go-forward end to internal combustion engine (ICE) powered new car sales. Norway is the earliest with its ban commencing in 2025. More than half of Norway’s car sales in 2020 were electricpowered. Many other OECD nations (and California) are in the 2030–35 year range for regulations that end ICE new car sales. In North America, electric vehicles (EV) are presently ~5% of sales, so the end of ICE sales here is farther out on the timeline. Yet it does give car fanatics pause to contemplate the ICE-powered icons they’ve never owned but still could before it’s too late. My “car of the week” fixation for several months now has been the upcoming Mark 8 2022 VW Golf GTI. That model has epitomized the “hot hatch” segment globally since its 1976 debut (yes, 45 years ago). Arguably, a new GTI would be as practical for my daily driver needs as a small SUV, yet lighter, cheaper and more fun to drive (six-speed manual transmission is standard in the immersive GTI). Ah, so many worthy ICE icons, so little time. It’s fun to dream. This past year didn’t countenance a lot of dreaming. Nevertheless, as dispiriting as the past year of COVID has been, 2020 isn’t on my personal hit parade of worst years. Still, 2020 will be easily recalled because pandemics are infrequent and they shoehorn all of us into similar shared experiences. I plan to relish (and will cherish) the approaching normalcy because of that collective challenge (profession, city, country) that’s been faced and vanquished. Now, let’s gather speed ASAP.
tesla; istock/ Beatriz Montes Duran
Besides that other big story, 2020 saw another seismic shift to the automotive industry
