INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN.

By Peter M. DeLorenzo

Detroit. Last week my column was about time, and a surprise for our readers too. The fact is that writing strictly about cars and the auto business can get tedious at times. This man can’t live on cars alone. Even though I grew up in the business, worked in the business and am still immersed in the business, I have plenty of other interests, so, I offer no apologies. I will zig and zag at times from here on out, just to keep things interesting, at least for me.

I mean, what’s in the news now that hasn’t already been pounded into the ground? The coming BEV revolution, even though no one is ready for it, especially real live mainstream buyers? It’s the biggest fundamental change in this business in more than 100 years, and no one can predict how it will go. It’s a giant “we’ll see” and the 2022–2025 time frame will tell us a lot. Some companies are quietly hedging their bets, while others have their asses hanging so far out in the breeze that if the BEV revolution doesn’t happen as planned it could have dire consequences. What else? The corrosive level of corruption that permeated the upper echelons of the UAW? Was that really a surprise to anyone? Hardly. The only surprise was the depth and breadth of the scale of the corruption. And the huge piles of money involved.

So, if last week was about time, this week will be about space - a concept we all deal with every day and throughout our lives. Some of us crave wide open spaces, and some of us would like to trip the light fantastic and actually go into space. Some desire their own space and need a wide berth to function properly. Others aren’t so claustrophobic and welcome close contact.

Our spatial relationships have been upended over the last two decades. Office hierarchy gave way to cube farms, and now people just wander around and plug in wherever they feel like it. Or they sit out in the open, until they have to go to a conference room to make a phone call. (I am happy to report, however, that there are serious rumblings about the pendulum swinging back and that actual offices are making a comeback. It couldn’t happen soon enough as far as I’m concerned.)

Some of us can space out at a moment’s notice, lost in a daydream or some lingering “woulda-coulda-shouldas.” Others are just spaced-out as a matter of course, or go through life intentionally detached from reality. To those people space isn’t an esoteric concept; it’s just Tuesday.

Our lives may be dictated to by the digits of a clock, but we’re consumed by the concept of space. Floor space at an auto show is crucial. The right retail space can make or break a business. Parking spaces can be like gold. Our personal space can be invaded, or flat-out ignored by individuals or crowds on subways and planes. The square footage of an apartment can add up to be a costly space. We make things evenly spaced when the situation demands it. Or we can cast things to the wind when we just… space out.

Space can be deep, or lost in, or somewhere we’ve never gone before. It can be explored, studied, charted and traveled. It can be observed and viewed through a telescope or by way of satellites. Or, by putting a man on the moon and just being there.

A blank space on a sheet of paper or a canvas can either be an inspiration for creativity, or a daunting millstone that shuts a person down and prevents things from getting started. We can space things out so that we don’t become overwhelmed. A space can be unoccupied, or we can rent storage spaces because we don’t have enough… space. We rarely have such a thing as too much space, however. Because space can be limited. Or confined. Or restricted. Or at a premium. Or only available on a first-come, first-served basis.

A space can be solemn, haunting and sad too. Arlington National Cemetery. Gettysburg. Shiloh. Antietam. Manassas. Vicksburg. The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Tragic reminders of the fragility of life and all those who died to protect our freedoms.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, those aforementioned wide-open spaces? They can be beautifully breathtaking. Moab. The Painted Desert. The Grand Canyon. The Badlands. Yosemite. Yellowstone. The Continental Divide. Joshua Tree National Park. Glacier National Park. Big Sur. We daydream about them, write about them, photograph them and paint them. They make us feel alive and invigorated, they can make us feel incredibly small and inconsequential, too, but they are oddly life-affirming and precious at the same time. (Everyone should drive across this great country at least once to be immersed in those wide-open spaces; it remains the quintessential American experience.) 

Our relationship to space says a lot about who we are and how we live life. I tend to avoid confined spaces, much preferring the wide-open spaces both in the physical realm and in thought. Needless to say, a narrowly defined path never really suited me. Tom Petty had it right when he said, “The sky was the limit.”

As it should be. 

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.