The new and the old are on different roads.
North Adelaide-based Cohda Wireless is at the core of the technology-driven future in an automotive industry undergoing a seismic shift, as the small firm levers a place for itself in the world of the driverless car.
At the same time, there's hope that Belgian entrepreneur Guido Dumarey can conjure up a last-ditch rescue of the Holden manufacturing plant in Elizabeth, South Australia, before it closes in 2017 and joins Mitsubishi, Ford and Toyota in sending Australian car assembly lines to the scrapheap. 
Cohda makes wireless sensor systems, allowing driverless cars to share their data with similar vehicles. The cars can "talk" to each other, allowing smooth travel and avoiding collisions.
Cohda software is used in more than half of the vehicle-to-vehicle trials under way around the world.
Cohda chief executive officer Paul Gray says the opportunities are vast, because car makers around the world are moving so fast to incorporate the technology. Cohda has 40 staff, most in Adelaide, but also has two small offices in Detroit in the US and Munich in Germany. "Car makers are trying to find solutions as as quickly as they can," he says.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill is heavily embracing the new but hasn't given up hope on the old, even though he remains cautious - albeit supportive - about the Holden plant revival plans.
His vision is to try to reposition South Australia - for so long central to Australia's vehicle and components industry - as a manufacturing heartland, playing a pivotal role as a hub for technology-driven innovation as driverless cars continue a long journey into the future.
His state became the first in Australia, in   September 2015, to introduce legislation to allow real-life testing of driverless cars.
Last   November, Volvo threw its weight behind the plans by trialling a modified Volvo XC90 on part of Adelaide's Southern Expressway.
It was the first trial on open roads in the southern hemisphere. Weatherill has the welcome mat out to try to foster companies with the intellectual grunt vital for the driverless car advance and, in doing so, figures it could be a real economic driver if a cluster of firms set up shop.
"There's a lot of spin-off issues associated with it," Weatherill told AFR Weekend. "It's a long-term view."
Cohda is a poster child for the new world.
Guido Dumarey, a Belgian billionaire who runs a company called Punch Corporation, knows all about transforming old-world manufacturing.
He has had success in buying a former General Motors transmission plant in Strasbourg, France which had been earmarked for closure in 2014 by the automotive giant as it rationalised. He saved 1000 jobs.
Dumarey has made overtures to General Motors and the federal and state governments about doing the same for the Holden plant at Elizabeth in Adelaide's northern suburbs, due to close in 2017.
Dumarey has floated plans to keep making the Holden Commodore under licence from General Motors, but under a different brand. Driverless cars still need the basic framework and chassis.
Dumarey has his hand out for taxpayers' money, but the political winds are blowing his way.
This is thick with irony. New federal Industry Minister Christopher Pyne met Dumarey and Punch Corp senior executives in Canberra on Tuesday, while Weatherill also held meetings on Thursday in Adelaide.
Punch is seeking some of the $800 million in funds in the federal government's Automotive Transformation Scheme, put in place when Tony Abbott was prime minister to try to limit the pain as the car makers progressively closed.
Abbott and his then treasurer, Joe Hockey, now Australia's ambassador to the United States, sounded the death knell for Australian car making in late 2013 by taking a hardline stance on taxpayer funding, refusing to tip any more money in to keep Holden going. Toyota soon wilted too.
The age of corporate welfare was supposedly gone and companies had to pay their own way after years of being heavily subsidised. But it could now make a reappearance in a new guise, helped along by a softer stance from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Pyne, who in 2015 went through awkward times.
Polling in 2015 showed that independent Senator Nick Xenophon's plans to run candidates in vulnerable seats in Adelaide could result in Pyne losing his eastern Adelaide seat in the 2016 federal election, after 23 years.
At the time, the reason given was the deep dislike for Abbott and his policies on the automotive sector, as well as a backflip on a promise to build submarines in Adelaide. That pressure has dissipated somewhat.
On Wednesday, Weatherill was cautious about Dumarey's chances of success and bemused about the federal government's apparent change of tack.
"Obviously we need to give every opportunity for their proposal to succeed, but we need to be realistic about this," Weatherill told a gaggle of reporters at the opening of the first Aldi chain outlet in South Australia, in Adelaide's northern suburbs.
The area, already reeling from high unemployment, is just a few kilometres from the Holden factory.
Weatherill says "there are a lot of boxes to tick", including potential remediation of the Holden site and the imprimatur of General Motors itself to sell.
The advent of driverless cars, while some way from becoming commonplace on roads, has up-ended business models too, as new players like Google and Tesla begin overtaking the traditional automotive manufacturers because IT and technology expertise has moved to be the central ingredient in car making.
Fostering the new may be a more prosperous road.