The lyrics from the Gary Numan song ‘Cars’ start as follows:
Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It’s the only way to live
In cars
There is something cocoon-like when you get into your car. When I return to it, after a business meeting or a trip somewhere, and get in, I feel like I’m home already. All I have to do now is drive. From your home – or office – to my home, via my mobile home.
For the road warriors, typically territory-based salespeople, the car really is the home office. We spend a lot of time in it, and we can use the time for calls, texts and emails, all hands free these days. If you love driving, and you’re a rep or a trucker, you can’t beat the seclusion of your the space that you control. It’s a luxury I never take for granted.
When I was getting a lift with a colleague from the New York office of an employer back to the airport a good few years ago, we were picked up by a guy in a Lincoln Town Car. We had to sit in the back because he literally had an office in the front passenger seat, complete with monitor, slide-out keyboard and so on, which he proceeded to use during several static moment as we crawled through Manhattan traffic. I was envious. It looked so comfortable. He was his own boss and everything he needed to do his job, in terms of the service he delivered and the supporting admin, was in the car.
After 35 years of driving, and as a passenger, I still enjoy the cocoon of the car. It’s the office, the window on the world, the insulation against the outside, and the place where road trip memories are made.
As a purely incidental footnote, I once saw Gary Numan and his band at a festival a few years ago, fully 30 years after his electro-pop heyday. The whole set was a rock concert, not at all what I was expecting. He was sensational, a word I try not to use unnecessarily.
Paul Dilger's blog 