A Car-World Divide
Enthusiasts love combustion, but EVs attract a new crowd
The visceral thrills of the Ford-powered Shelby Cobra can stir the soul. Of the 998 made between 1961 and 1968, 890 have survived, and they sell for an average of more than $2 million at auction. Fiberglas-bodied replicas abound.
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In 1963, legendary stock car builders Holman & Moody proudly painted “410 HP” on the hood of the fearsome Ford Galaxy they campaigned on the NASCAR circuit. It took a folk hero like Glenn “Fireball” Roberts to drive it.
But these days, any reasonably well-off suburban family can wrangle a 1,020-horsepower electric Tesla Model S Plaid through stop-and-go traffic on the way to their kid’s soccer game.
It’s a vehicular revolution that’s pulling the car culture in two directions.
On the one hand, old-school enthusiasts and collectors vow they’ll never forsake their beloved gasoline-powered cars. They’ll cling to big-block Detroit iron, seductive European exotics, precision-engineered Asian tuners or historic century-old Brass Era...
