As lover of robots and machines it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that I’m also a lover of cars, trucks and all other vehicles. I’m a huge fan of the electric vehicle craze coming out in the 21st century. And because I love cars so much (I used to collect muscle cars) I would much rather see the delicate hand of a human being touching up my car paint and replacing my tires than a robot doing it. It’s hypocritical, I know, because I often vouch how I could really use a robot or how society should happily adjust as machines replace people’s jobs, and now here I am saying I won’t let a robot work on my muscle car! But we all have that one thing in our lives that we just won’t trust a robot to work on.
If you’re Elvis Presley you might never let a robot touch your hair, or if you’re Michael Jordan you might never let a robot touch your shoe laces. If you’re me, a man with a background in designing and selling machinery to businesses, who used to collect cars, you might never let a robot touch the pristine red paint of your automobile. Muscle cars are supposed to be mechanical and free of robotics, after all. If you want robots to repair your car, go get a Tesla. As tradition upholds, muscle cars should be worked on by human hands, by mechanics and auto body specialists who also have a love for classic cars and know what they’re doing.
I hope I’m allowing you to make sense of this irony. The irony of me, a machine guy who loves robots, not wanting robots to touch my precious muscle cars, is the whole reason I thought this blog post would be entertaining. Indeed, I’d much rather take my car down to Auto Body Shop Hamilton where I know another car lover will work on it than a robotic assembly line. My reasoning is that because muscle cars are supposed to have no computers, just raw engine power and mechanical buttons, that means it’s almost blasphemy to let computer-controlled machines work on it.
This is also why in the far-flung future I suspect human mechanics that know how to work on classic gasoline cars will be highly sought after. When they stop making gasoline powered cars their value will skyrocket and mechanics who know how to work on them will be paid very well, I assume. It’s like how video game consoles that are no longer manufactured today, like the Nintendo Entertainment System, are now worth thousands of dollars.
So now to conclude, let me ask you a question that might make this all make more sense: if you were living in the year 2057 and you had been caring for a muscle car from the 1960s for over 30 years, carefully cleaning off the rust, touching up the paint, etc., then would you let a robot that’s been working on nothing but electric cars touch your precious automobile, or would you search for a human mechanic who specializes in classic cars?
Think about it!