I'm just a lurker passing by, who noticed "Car Wars" and got excited.
It seems to me that the backstory behind Car Wars has actually gotten more viable than it seemed back in the 80s. Some issues to consider:
1) Peak Oil. Depending on who you believe, we have either already reached global peak oil production or will in the next 1-35 years. And the oil that is left will be increasingly hard and costly to reach. One thing that is certain, though, oil is a finite resource and it WILL run out.
2) Alternative fuels will replace oil. Electric cars, LNG cars, ethanol cars.
3) In America, corn is king. It seems like everything we eat and many of the other products we own are produced in part from corn, Heck, even my pants are probably made of corn. If ethanol becomes more important as a replacement for oil, corn becomes still more important as a resource. The "Grain Blight" postulated in Car Wars could turn out to be an extremely devastating "Corn Blight". Throw in environmental disruption due to global climate change if you'd like!
4) Fortress cities. Modern America has lots of increasingly exclusive gated communities, and private security firms are in the news all the time. [current political material deleted. -Aramis]
Anyway, just funny to think that all those old Popular Mechanics predictions about flying your hovercar to work never came about, but a silly game of vehicular mayhem had a pretty prescient take on a possible future.
