Over the past few months I’ve driven some technically clever cars. But a weekend at the track behind the wheel of a modern classic leaves me wondering if I’ve committed some deep heresy.

If you haven’t driven the most recent Audis, Teslas, and Volvos, you’d be surprised how smart these vehicles have become and how rapidly previous generations become dated. Driver assistance systems aren’t quite fully autonomous yet, but if a car’s sensors can read the lines on the road, it will do almost everything for you. Got a turn coming up, or approaching a bend too fast? The navigation system can spot either of those and slow the car down for you. Stuck in traffic? You can go hands- and feet-free up to 37mph (60km/h, the legal maximum such systems are allowed to work over in Europe).

As a driver, this leaves you more mental bandwidth to do other things, like looking at the scenery on long and boring road trips. The benefits to driver fatigue are undeniable. For long distance cruising—day or night, rain or shine—this future enabled by Velodyne and Mobileye and Nvidia and Qualcomm is already promising to be a bright one.