Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Automobile, Its History and Influence, and Some Contradictions 1
1. Beginnings: From a Mechanical Curiosity to a Plaything for the Well-to-Do 9
European by Birth, American by Adoption 9
Technological Antecedents: The Bicycle 11
Compact Power: The Internal Combustion Engine 14
Choices Made: Competition from Steam Engines and Electric Motors 15
American Pioneers 18
Organization as Power 20
The Automobile for Better or Worse? 22
Music Galore 26
The Mechanical Arts and the Coming of the Machine Age 27
The Quest for Speed 30
2. The Inscrutable Henry Ford and the Rise of the Machine Age 32
From a Dearborn Farm to the World Stage 33
Frederick Winslow Taylor and “One Best Way” 36
The Genesis of Mass Production at Highland Park 36
The Flivver King 42
The Model T: What a Car! 44
Later Years: Hero or Anti-Hero? 46
Gone in Sixty Seconds: Joy-Riders and Criminals 47
3. The Rise of the Competition and the Consumer During the 1920s 54
Billy Durant and “Silent” Sloan 54
Kettering, Earl, and “Keeping the Customer Dissatisfied” 56
The City of the Future and Dynamic Dayton of the 1930s 63
The Last of the Big Three: The Chrysler Corporation 64
The Independents 67
Innovation at the Periphery: The Cracker Jacker, Rickenbacker 68
The Jordan and Advertising the Dream 69
4. From Out of the Mud to On the Open Road 72
Which Came First: Good Roads or the Automobile? 72
The Good Roads Movement 73
A Transcontinental Link: The Lincoln Highway 75
Federal Legislation and the Gas Tax 76
Two Lane Black Top, or Concrete If There Is Money 76
Auto Camping and “Gypsying” Across America 79
Fill ’er Up 80
Road Food 83
Divided Highways, Parkways, and Expressways 83
5. Religion, Courtship, Sex, and Women Drivers 87
An Answer to Prayer or Something to Pray About? 87
Sex in the Back Seat 91
Those Women Drivers! 93
Cars as Homes 96
6. The Interwar Years: The Great Depression, Aerodynamics, and Cars of the Olympian Age 101
Olympian Automobiles of the 1930s 102
Streamlining and the Chrysler “Airflop” 108
Sitdown, the Coming of the United Auto Workers, and the Battle of the Overpass 112
The Poetic Response to the Automobile 114
Singing the Blues about Automobiles and Life 115
Filming on the Race Track and Soundstage 118
7. World War II and the Reconversion Economy: No Time for Sergeants or Aspiring Automobile Manufacturers 119
“Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep...” 121
Wartime Labor: Sacrifices and Selfishness 124
Gas Rationing 124
The Black Market: “Chiseled Gas” 127
The Reconversion Economy and a Man’s Dream 130
8. The Golden Age of the Automobile: The 1950s in America 133
The Automobile and Civil Rights 135
Hot Rod 138
Sports Cars on American Tracks, and The Red Car 140
Some Critics Surface: Safety and the Environment 143
Dealers, Good and Bad 146
The UAW, the Big Three, and Pattern Bargaining 149
The Cars of the Golden Era 150
The 1958 Recession and European Competition 153
The Volkswagen Bug 154
Cars and Rock and Roll 155
Film: The Rebels 158
A Night at the Drive-In 160
On the Road 161
The Coming of the Interstates 162
Summing Up the Glorious 1950s 163
9. The Go-Go Years, 1959–1973 164
The Microbus, Cars, and the Hippies 164
The Cadillac and the Establishment 167
An Age of Ambivalence 169
Harry Crews and the “White Trash” in His Novel Car 170
Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed 171
Government Regulation: Safety and the Environment 173
From a Brief Affair with Economy Vehicles to the Emergence
of the Muscle Car 175
California Dreaming 178
Oil Shock I 178
Japanese Automobiles Come in a Big Way to America 180
James Bond, Steve McQueen, and the Action Thriller 181
Mobile Lovemaking 184
Summing Up the Sixties 184
10. The Automobile World Upside Down, 1980s to the Present 185
Rivethead and the Quality Cat 186
The Automobile and Contemporary Art 189
Lessons Not Learned 189
Trucks, Sport Utility Vehicles, and Crossovers 190
The Car Hobby: Car Crazy 191
Cars and Crime: The Drive-By 194
NASCAR Nation 194
Saturn, Chrysler, and Germans in the New South 197
New Technologies 199
Automobiles, Women, Eros, and Film 201
Poetry, Women, and Passion 202
Where Does the Automobile in American Life Go from Here? 206
Epilogue: The Automobile and One American Life 208
Chapter Notes 211
Select Bibliography 231
Index 241
