TIME WAS WHEN WE HAD THIS THING CALLED "TELEVISION"

And it only came in Black-and-White (or, to be more precise, slightly greenish shades of gray) and it came in only three major flavors: ABC, NBC and CBS, plus a dull "educational" channel that nobody ever watched and, at least here in the Chicago area, an independent Channel 9 (WGN) which broadcast Chicago Cubs games back when they were almost as abysmal as out current Chicago White Sox. Only not quite so much. I also recall that there was a wonderfully smarmy show called "I Remember Mama," which was so chock full of homespun family values, folk wisdom and finding "the right thing to do" in difficult situations that today's cynical, sophisticated and media-bombarded audience would surely roll their eyes and throw up on their brand-name training shoes.

Which creates a bit of a problem for the fine folks who design, build and try to market automobiles in such a media environment. They want--hell, NEED!--to reach out to our uncouth, loudmouth, gun-totin' Uncle Billy (who is desperate to sign a note for more than he and the little woman paid for their first house 30 years ago so's he can buy himself an extended-cab Monster Truck pickup that sounds like a damn Can-Am car and drinks fossil fuel by the 55-gallon drumload) and also to my maiden Aunt Emily who doesn't eat anything that breathes, bleeds or moves its bowels and hopes to leave such a soft, thoughtful and eco-sympathetic footprint on this earth that no-one in any future generations will even recall that she was here. They also need to reach John Q. and Fred Average and their wives and families and all the upwardly-mobile striver types from either gender (or pick one out of the middle if that's your preference) and anyone else with a street address or apartment number who might possibly be in the market for a new car.

Side Note Observation: Not sure I see a viable future for all this splicing and hyphenating of last names that's become so maddeningly popular on the marital front these days. I mean, what happens a generation or two down the road when Katy Worthington-Smythe links up with Alex McCracken-Schwartz? And then THEIR kid wants to marry into the Holmgren-Ellison-Jones-Muccianti family. Hell, you won't even be able to endorse your own tax-refund check (assuming we still have those) on account of the paper isn't wide enough...

Just sayin'

But we were talking about auto manufacturers seeking to market their latest offerings in a media environment where there are literally hundreds of network and streaming opportunities plus all sorts of self-styled "influencer" types cluttering up cyberspace and the fact of it is that the maelstrom of flashbulb-pop images and cacophony of bleating messages has brought most of modern humanity to just tune it all out. Or, like at our house, just RECORD the damn shows you want to watch and then play them back, as little as a half-hour later, whilst fast-forwarding--at breakneck speed!--through the damn commercials.

"BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAHH!"

The point here is that time and society have moved on, and the best way for those auto manufactures to break through the noise and clutter is by showing off their latest and best (or just their latest, if that's all they have) to a concentrated and diverse audience of interested and aware motoring journalists, magazine and newsletter writers, radio and TV types, podcasters and bloggers with a genuine and provable audience all in one fell swoop.

To that end, MAMA (the Midwest Automotive Media Association) has been presenting their Spring Rallye every year, which puts the media types up at the posh Osthoff resort hotel in Elkhart Lake, WI, feeds them all sorts of good food along with their stories and sales pitches and turns them loose on Road America's storied 4.048 mile racetrack and on the leafy, winding, scenic and sylvan surrounding country roads to check it all out for themselves. Plus a pair of narrow, steep. rutted and boulder-strewn off-road courses for the knobby-tire four-wheel-drive set.

What's not to like?

The very best part is that the assembled journos get to run the various cars on offer side-by-side and one-after-the-other, which is something you simply can't do or evaluate with the keys to a single "press-fleet" loaner car.

Did I mention it's also one whale of a good time?

Although it did rain all day on our supposed "track day," which put a bit of a damper on things. But it did wonders for the off-road courses, which turned into a glorious swamp of mud, goo and glop. See pic below:.

Yes, it was fun. There's no point trying to deny it. And hats off to the fine gents from Jeep who not only laid out the course, but stood out there in the cold and wet to help guide us off-road tenderfeet through the trickier sections. I now find myself wanting more, and wondering if it's too late in life to take a crack at Baja...

Also wanted to do a little feeling around and finding out about electric cars, which have gone from being all the rage and the wave of the future to, well, not quite the cultural and market-share Tsunami a lot of folks predicted (and bet the farm on). Here's my take on the whole thing:

1) Electric is surely going to be a bigger and bigger part of our automotive future (and to those countries that have done so well selling us oil over the years: go buy yourself a sports team or two...oh, wait, you're already doing that!)

2) Electric is PERFECT for city delivery vehicles, mail trucks, school busses, taxicabs (Ubers) and even cop cars that mostly operate in and around urban centers (where pollution is at its worst and needs the most help) and especially vehicles that have built-in "down-time" in their schedules for recharging. I see whole fleets of school buses with solar panel roofs to charge themselves while the little darlings are passing notes back-and-forth in class regarding who is going out with whom or who is interested in whom and whose parents are going to be out of town this weekend so we can PAR-TAY until the cops come to break it up...

3) The LEAST attractive alternative for full electric (as opposed to hybrids) is your everyday family car. That will come eventually, but I don't think it's uite here yet.

4) In general (and as a lifelong fan and addict re: the act, art, skills and process of driving a motor vehicle), I find the controls of MOST of the electric vehicles I've sampled distant, removed, devoid of feel and lifeless. Like Detroit's early power steering systems, they put you far away from the tactile connection where the tire contact patch meets the road. There are reasons for this, since batteries weigh a ton (often literally) and, if you take all that heft and then try to mask it by making the controls ridiculously light and effortless, there's a space-ship sort of disconnect that, on the one hand, gets the job done but, on the other, makes you yearn for an AI driver since it's no damn fun operating a motorcar any more.

As long as I'm griping ("you kids get off my lawn!"), I think the current state and size of the map, destination and "infotainment" systems in most of the current new crop are really dangerous (says the seasoned racer who usually scoffs at nervous Nellie types). Those displays can do one and only one thing when the vehicle is in motion: TAKE THE EFFING DRIVER'S EYES AND ATTENTION OFF THE DAMN ROAD AND THE OTHER CARS IN THE GENERAL VICINITY THAT HE OR SHE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT!

It hasn't happened yet (that I know of) but there's a whopping big lawsuit out there somewhere and, IMHO, it's circling for a massive crash landing. Ditto for AI-driven cars. Mark my words...

So what cars did I enjoy the most?

The Toyota BRZ and it's Subaru twin and the Golf GTI and Type R prove that the pocket-rocket "sports coupe" is still very much alive and a whole lot of fun. As is the reborn and now electric VW "BUZZ," which is more than just a retread VW Microbus but also the subject of a truly brilliant ad campaign that reminds me of the upstart, hilarious and iconoclastic VW ads from the sixties that turned all the VW Beetle's quirks and oddities into virtues. Think they'll do it again, even if the best part of the driving experience is how it makes you feel, rather than how it feels to be driving it. And those fat "A" pillars (which I'm sure are there to keep the roof from caving in on the occupants in case of a roll-over accident) are impossible to see through and very difficult to see around during normal maneuvering. But I suppose you get used to it.

Things that brightened my day in spite of the rain:

The Koreans have quietly done it again. They've been offering value-for-money until they've made the manufacturers of a lot of other cars want to open a damn vein, plus they've quietly come up with some really clever ideas. Like on the dash of the Kia GT-Line Turbo (and several other Korean cars), which features a pair of traditional round dials (tach left, speedo on right) only when you put on the turn signals (say for a left turn), the left side dial magically turns into the view through a round left-side mirror. Same with the other dial when you want to signal a right-hand turn. This is so simple and logical and works so damn well that you wonder why everybody doesn't do it?

By contrast, I got into another, very buck$-up electric car and none of the dash controls made sense without a little studying and/or experimenting.

Just sayin'

Final note: I was very surprised to find (as you will be) that my favorite and most surprising car of the entire day--my personal "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," if you will--was the little electric Fiat 500E. Sure, it's tiny and electric and doesn't have much range, but it's quick and it's fun and just perfect for boppin around town or in the suburbs and, best of all, it DRIVES and FEELS like a great little sports sedan. The tactile sensations and feedback are those of a slick and sporty little econobox, and it was such a contrast to the "pilot-to-tower" distance and sense of isolation from the road in most of the other electrics I tried.

Then again, I always said I loved Italian cars (mostly Alfas, but Fiats and Ferraris, too) because it was obvious that the folks who designed, built and developed them truly loved to drive.