Grand Tour presenter Jeremy Clarkson has warned of a ‘terrifying’ future for petrolheads, with the current trend towards driverless cars, ownership schemes and electric vehicles a death knell for the traditional car enthusiast.
Clarkson was speaking at the inaugural Motor Awards, accepting his title of Motoring Personality of the Year. In traditional Clarkson style, he launched with a quip – “what a surprise!” before launching into his vision of the future.
“It’s interesting that we’ve come here tonight and we’re competing, seeing whether the Seat is better than the Vauxhall or the Ford or the Nissan. But the truth of the matter is… is that the world is changing, really really fast.
“It isn’t so much as which car you should buy, as used to be the case. It’s now becoming much more ‘how will we actually get about’? It’s becoming an interesting debate in the motoring world.
“Will we actually own cars at all? It’s a terrifying prospect for all of us, but it’s one that may well be coming. Who knows what we’re going to do about it.”
Clarkson has been an outspoken critic on several new car technologies in the past. He recently described autonomous vehicles as ‘dangerous’, writing in the Sunday Times magazine: “I drove a car the other day which has a claim of autonomous capability and twice in the space of 50 miles on the M4 it made a mistake, a huge mistake, which could have resulted in death.”
He’s also not a fan of car-sharing, writing in an old Top Gear column: “The idea of sharing a car in a morning with anyone other than Terry Wogan fills me with dread. So the idea of sharing my ‘car’ with people I don’t even know, people who may have germs or smelly bottoms, is truly terrifying.”