Will our love affair with the car survive self-driving vehicles?

As a toddler, I drove my family half-mad reading out the names of the cars we passed in the street. At eight, my pockets were crammed with model cars. At 14, I bought an MOT write-off and devoted time I should have spent on homework to getting it up and running. At one minute past midnight on my 17th birthday, I persuaded my mum to sit alongside me for my first ‘L’ plate drive on public roads.

So I’ve always loved cars. Yes, I know that there are too many on the roads. Yes, I know the internal combustion engine contributes to global warming. But give me the sound of a flat-plane V8 at full throttle and all reason is swept away.

My wealthy contemporaries – the ones who did do their homework, perhaps – have sent the prices of classic cars soaring. The Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Aston Martins we yearned for as kids are now bought at auction by successful, middle-aged entrepreneurs who have the funds to realise their childhood dream.

But what will today’s 8 year olds grow up to want? What are they dreaming of? Will it be a car at all? Manufacturers once advertised 0-60mph times; the features they now plug are wireless charging stations, Bluetooth connectivity and the ability to stream music, texts and Facebook updates. We’ve swapped the dream of a ’69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a four on the floor* for a smartphone docking station on wheels.

Skills we once took a pride in, like double-declutching and parallel parking, have been taken over by software. Ford’s Focus RS even has a ‘Drift’ function that shuffles the torque to the outermost rear wheel to help you hang the tail out (to be fair you still need skill and nerve to use it). And pretty soon we’ll have fully autonomous vehicles. All the major manufacturers are working on it, Google has developed self-driving cars and there are rumours of an Apple iCar. Tesla’s self-driving hardware already offers self-driving capability at ‘a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver’.

Autonomous driving is both safer and more efficient. A ‘train’ of self-drive cars can tailgate on a motorway at 70mph with minimal braking distance because they’ll be linked by software to act as one vehicle. Our roads will take more traffic, more safely. You’ll be able to catch up with your email while your car takes you to work.

For most of us, 90% of our journeys are routine, on traffic-laden roads. I imagine we’ll be quite happy to let software chauffeur us. But what about the 10% of the time when the sun is shining, you’re on a deserted road and just want to enjoy driving for driving’s sake? Will the software let us? For Generation 1.0 cars maybe. But as the artificial intelligence driving our cars gets ever more perfect, and as insurers heavily penalise accidents caused by humans, the steering wheel will go.  We’ll become the driven, not the drivers.

Old-style driving – on track days and race circuits – will become a niche activity, like horseriding. And when cars are about as exciting as domestic appliances, a $1.7 trillion global industry will find it no longer has a dream to sell.

I can’t imagine what my eight-year-old self would have thought of that. But the grown-up he became isn’t exactly thrilled.

*Bruce Springsteen ‘Racing in the Street’. So far he’s failed to write a follow-up about a self-driving Google pod. Apparently you can't fit Fuelie heads to a 396 big block anyway, but even The Boss isn't perfect.