The Current Golden Age Of Enthusiast Cars Is Over

Every new beginning is another beginning’s end, right? If that’s the case then the end of this golden age of cars is probably the beginning of a new golden age of cars. It’ll be different, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be worse.

This Morning Dump is devoted to change and we’ll start with the news that the trio behind the modern Corvette is no longer employed by General Motors, with longtime Corvette marketing and product guy Harlan Charles being assigned an early retirement. It’s ok, they’re going out with a bang.

Oh, hey, what a coincidence, the Blazer EV SS will be the pace car for the Daytona 500. That’s new! Perhaps this is a new era of cars where technology and electrification are more important. That might be fun.

Where does Tesla line up in that new world? You think it would be at the top, but more and more sales reports are coming in and it’s showing that Tesla is currently experiencing weakness. The one place where Tesla and others see new profits is in advanced driver systems, so the news that BYD is going to be giving out its system for free was unwelcome news to some.

From C5 To C8, Corvette Has Had A Great Run

If you love this era of cars, which I think can be thought of as from the C5 Corvette to the C8 Corvette, then it’s a great time to have enough money to afford something fun. I’ve probably said it before, but I don’t think there’s been a better time in my life to be a car enthusiast.

The peak of cars, at least in feel, was probably 2002-2004, with the E46 BMW M3, E39 M5, 997, C5 Z06, et cetera. In terms of performance, though, it’s definitely now, although the C6 ZR1 was its own kind of revelation.

This doesn’t mean that cars won’t get faster, because they always get faster. It doesn’t mean they won’t get better. In many ways, they probably will! It’s just that the things that defined this era of cars are no longer what’s most important.

What defines this era? It’s debatable, but I’d say the democratization of high horsepower, the wide accessibility of forced induction, the slow phase-out of manual transmissions (which I’m not saying is a good thing, but it is a characteristic of this era), the ability of car companies to build niche variants, advancements in suspension tech, and the introduction of electric performance cars.

I think the 2001 Corvette Z06, with its 385 horsepower and manual transmission, is around the start. I’d also entertain the 997.1 Porsche 911 or, keeping it GM, the 40th Anniversary C5 with the introduction of magnetorheological dampers to a sports car. The mere existence of a manual CTS-V Wagon is notable.

The passing of the torch can be tied to the banishing of the Hellcat V8 (though it may return) if you’re feeling glum, the departure of three key Corvette employees if you’re feeling nostalgic, or the electrification of the Corvette if you’re feeling more positive.

No single person is responsible for the modern Corvette, of course, but the departure of engineer Tadge Juechter, and the shuffling off of designer Kirk Bennion and marketing manager Harlan Charles, is a reminder of how important all three were to the company. Road & Track has a good interview with Charles who, based on social media posts, seemed surprised to get hit with early retirement.

“It’s tough,” Charles told R&T. “It’s like a life-changing experience, you know? It’s been like my identity and now that it’s kinda done.”

“But everyone has made me feel so wonderful. I mean, who gets that?” he said. “I can’t believe the outpouring that the fans — the Corvette friends and family, really, I should call them, have given me. It’s been so awesome. It makes me feel so good.”

Well, let us at Road & Track add to that chorus: thank you, Harlan Charles, for your decades of contributions to America’s Sports Car. The last four generations of Corvette have revolutionized the nameplate’s position in the enthusiast market. That’s going to be a tough run for the next team to follow.

Today we got news of the next generation of what is to follow and, I gotta say, it doesn’t look too bad.

Meet Your New Daytona 500 Pace… Crossover

As the site’s resident NASCAR fan I am, of course, excited for the Daytona 500. Not like Penske needs to win anything else, but I do want lovable weirdo Austin Cindric to get a championship in Cup. If not, maybe SVG.

You don’t need to wait to know who will be out front this year for the start of the race, because it’ll be a Chevy Blazer EV SS. It’s the quickest full EV that GM makes, for the moment, and it’ll mark the first time an EV has paced the field. Given the mixed EV sentiment of the new administration, this is an interesting move, though GM was quick to point out that “Our Chevrolet V8 engines continue to be an important part of NASCAR” in case you were worried.

Also on hand will be the Blazer EV.R NASCAR prototype that’ll sit alongside the one Ford already revealed. If you don’t want an EV out front, you’ll still see a Corvette Stingray for the Xfinity Series race and a Silverado RST for the Craftsman Truck race. Also, our occasional contributor Parker Kligerman will be racing in the Truck race and then calling the Xfinity race, which will be cool

Tesla Is Not Doing Well, But Maybe That Doesn’t Matter

Elon Musk appears to have some amount of control over various arms of the federal government. He still, also, has a car company. I’ve said this many times before, but Elon Musk doesn’t see his company as a car company. Here’s where I’ll tap in our pal Patrick George over at InsideEVs, who wrote “Tesla Sales Are Tanking Globally.”

Is this because people are mad at Elon Musk? Is it just declining EV subsidies or new competition? Is it just factory upgrades and production issues? Probably, yes, although it’s maybe not just those:

But one factor feels inescapable at this point: the backlash to Elon Musk’s increased involvement in politics. In the U.S., the Tesla CEO spent the past week—illegally, according to many lawyers and constitutional scholars—breaching the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment systems as part of President Trump’s effort to unilaterally defund various government agencies. In Germany, Musk’s vocal support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been widely cited as a turn-off for EV buyers, and the same has been said of his politics in the UK.

Though it’s hard to gauge empirically, Musk’s far-right political turn does seem to be having an effect on Tesla sales—especially among the more affluent, urban progressive-to-centrist buyers traditionally more inclined to buy EVs in many places. A recent report from the nonpartisan EV Politics Project indicates that Tesla and Musk are losing support among EV intenders and Democratic-leaning buyers faster than they’re gaining support from people on the other side of the political spectrum, who tend to be less interested in EVs. In other words, Musk is losing Tesla sales ground with the traditional EV base, and not making it up with any of his new supporters.

Again, I don’t think Musk prefers this, but he’s made it clear that cars are just cars, and what he does is more about robots and artificial driving. He sees the company as being enormously valuable in a way a car company might not be able to achieve by just selling cars:

I see a path. I’m not saying it’s an easy path but I see a path of Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far. Not even close, like maybe several times more than — I mean, there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined. There’s a path to that.

I mean, I think it’s like…a difficult path but it is an achievable path. And that is overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots. So, our focus is actually building toward that. And then that’s where we’re laying the ground.

Historically, he’s been right about a lot of these predictions, eventually.

BYD Seeks To ‘DeepSeek’ ADAS

The value proposition of artificial intelligence is that it’ll do a lot more than just write lyrics to a song about why David misses his Jeeps in the style of Tom Waits. The idea of value is predicated on the notion that you’ll need enormous processing power (and actual, generated power) to accomplish tasks we can barely conceive.

This idea was challenged recently with the introduction of China’s DeepSeek, which was allegedly inexpensive to train and less processor-intensive to run. Or maybe it wasn’t as cheap to train as everyone thought. Even if DeepSeek itself isn’t quite as great as everyone initially feared, it was the mere idea that it could be done that scared everyone.

So, the question has to be asked: Could the same be done to smart driving? That’s an issue for Xpeng and Geely shares today after BYD announced it would offer ADAS features, for free, on most of its cars.

From Reuters via Yahoo!:

BYD on Monday put on sale 21 models equipped with its “God’s Eye” advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) similar to that offered by rival Tesla, for no additional cost. The cheapest model the Chinese electric vehicle giant is offering is the Seagull, priced at $9,555.

BYD’s move far undercuts rivals, and analysts said it could start a new price war in an already hyper-competitive market, comparing it to how Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek recently roiled the global AI sector with its low-price offering.

God’s Eye is such a terrible product name. It sounds like something a villain would create in a Die Hard movie you’ll never watch.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

This is the third time I’ve done Mitski on TMD, I think, and I was afraid I did “My Love Mine All Mine” off “The Land Is Hospitable And So Are We.” I did “Bug Like An Angel.” I lose track of these so easily. Does someone want to make a Spotify playlist or an Apple Music (ideally) TMD playlist? I’ll send you something fun.

The Big Question

What defines this era of cars? What’s going to define the next one?