Energy Crisis Revisited

Foretelling the future is impossible, yet that is what executives in car companies have to do. When I was a kid, by the year 2000, cities would be traversed by monorails, and we’d all have our private helicopters and wear one-piece jumpsuits. The nearest to disharmony would be at meal times with ill-tempered kids saying, “Not blue pills again! I hate blue pills.” What has happened instead has been hand-thrown pottery, Laura Ashley, foodies, and a renewed respect for the past. We cherish Model Ts, where once they were thrown into junk yards. The artists, who once drew those impressions of the future, collected their wages and had no responsibility for their visions. Car companies, however, face real futurology. New models take years and huge investments to bring to market. Now, we have a fuel crisis, the third in the last half century or so.

In 1956, Egypt threatened to nationalize the Suez Canal. There were only a few more years to run on the lease owned by the Suez Canal Company; but Britain and France invaded, in a last imperial hurrah and Israel joined in. Egypt responded by scuttling ships in the canal, which meant that oil to Europe had to go around Africa. Fuel rationing was imposed, the motor racing calendar was upset, and we were invaded by a swarm of bubble cars. Heinkel, Dornier, and Messerschmitt were making them already. BMW made the Isetta under license and one took a class win in the 1955 Mille Miglia. It was BMW’s finest achievement in a proper Mille Miglia—a race they confuse with the 1940 Gran Premio di Brescia della Mille Miglia.