Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars

by Paul Ingrassia

Overview

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Ingrassia comes a narrative of America like no other: a cultural history that explores how cars have both propelled and reflected the national experience—from the Model T to the Prius.

From the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, America’s history is a vehicular history–an idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Ingrassia.

Engines of Change is a wondrous epic in fifteen automobiles, including the Corvette, the Beetle, and the Chevy Corvair, as well as the personalities and tales behind them: Robert McNamara’s unlikely role in Lee Iacocca’s Mustang, Henry Ford’s Model T, as well as Honda’s Accord, the BMW 3 Series, and the Jeep, among others. Through these cars and these characters, Ingrassia shows how the car has expressed the particularly American tension between the lure of freedom and the obligations of utility. Narrative history of the highest caliber, Engines of Change is an entirely edifying new way to look at the American story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451640649
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/14/2013
Pages:	395
Sales rank:	348,234
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Paul Ingrassia, formerly the Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and later the president of Dow Jones Newswire, is the deputy editor-in-chief of Reuters. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 (with Joseph B. White) for reporting on management crises at General Motors, he is the author of Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster.

Read an Excerpt

1

WHEN HENRY MET SALLIE: CAR WARS AND CULTURE CLASHES AT THE DAWN OF AMERICA’S AUTOMOTIVE AGE

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars.

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row1

Just north of downtown Detroit on a small street called Piquette sits an inner-city storefront church called the Abundant Faith Cathedral. By the looks of the surrounding weed-choked lots and empty factories, abundant faith is exactly what’s needed, not to mention plenty of hope. The neighborhood is a postindustrial ghetto, although right across the street from the church is a functioning business called the General Linen & Uniform Service. It occupies the first floor of an old building where, as unlikely as it seems, modern America began.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 When Henry Met Sallie: Car Wars and Culture Clashes at the Dawn of America's Automotive Age 1

2 Zora, Zora, Zora: A Bolshevik Boy Escapes the Nazis and Saves the Great American Sports Car 31

3 The 1959 Cadillacs: Style, Status, and the Race for the Biggest Tail Fins Ever 57

4 Volkswagen's Beetle and Microbus: The Long and Winding Road from Hitler to the Hippies 81

5 The Chevy Corvair Makes Ralph Nader Famous, Lawyers Ubiquitous, and (Eventually) George W. Bush President of the United States 111

6 Turning a "Librarian" into a "Sexpot": The Youth Boom, the Sixties, and the Making of the Mustang 141

7 The Brief But Glorious Reign of John Z. DeLorean and the Pontiac GTO 163

8 Ohio Gozaimasu: Godzilla, Mr. Thunder, and How a Little Japanese Car Became America's Big Ichiban 191

9 The Chrysler Minivans: Baby Boomers Become Soccer Moms and a, um, Driving Force in American Politics 219

10 The BMW 3 Series: The Rise of the Yuppies and the Road to Arugula 241

11 The Jeep: From War to Suburbia, or How to Look Like You're Going Rock Climbing When You're Really Going to Nordstrom 265

12 The Ford F-Series: Cowboys, Country Music, and Red-Meat Wheels for Red-State Americans 289

13 An Innovative Car (the Prius), Its Insufferable Drivers (the Pious), and the Advent of a New Era 313

Afterword 341

Acknowledgments 347

Notes 349

Selected Bibliography 373

Index 377

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A thoughtful, propulsive assay of the machine that changed a nation, a world." —-The Wall Street Journal

Editorial Reviews

You will never look at a car the same way after reading Engines of Change—as I strongly recommend to anyone who relishes great storytelling that combines biography, social and political history, science, and romance. Having driven and virtually lived in a 1953 Plymouth on a year’s journey across Eisenhower’s America, and having followed that up many driving years later by writing on the innovations of Henry Ford, I thought I knew something of the history of cars. I was all the more surprised—and vastly entertained—by the riches in Ingrassia’s stories of fifteen vehicles embodying the American dream from the Model T to the Beetle, the Corvair, the Corvette, and the Mustang to the pickups and the Prius (driven by the Pious). Even readers who cannot tell a camshaft from a cami-knicker will find fascination in a gallery of characters depicted by Ingrassia with vivacity and wit.”—Sir Harold Evans

"The whole country in 15 cars—that's crowded! And Engines of Change is indeed packed from rocker panels to sunroof with good stories and salient facts about the automobiles that shaped America, from the oddity of the Model T to the oddballs driving the Prius."—P.J. O'Rourke

"Highly entertaining... lucid... Engines of Change informed and charmed me..."—Joseph Epstein, The Wall Street Journal

"The prose is lapidary, the tone informed by humor.Paul Ingrassia has written an automobile book that goes beyond the genre;it's for anyone interested in modernity and what led us to where we are."—Miles Collier, The Revs Institute for Automotive Research

"Paul Ingrassia knows where the bodies are buried, or maybe where the keys to the American car business got lost. With a swift, sure scalpel honed by years as the industry reporter, he anatomizes Detroit in all its glory and inglorious decline. A thoughtful, propulsive assay of themachine that changed a nation, a world."—Dan Neil, car critic, The Wall Street Journal

"Entertaining and instructive..."—George Will, The Washington Post

"Sure, cars suck up gas, and they promote suburban sprawl, but they also help drive the economy, and drive families from home to school to soccer field. And, of course, cars fire our imaginations. Paul Ingrassia, who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting from Detroit for The Wall Street Journal, has written a book about cars that may not all be cherished classics or engineering marvels, but have earned a place in America's scrapbook."—Scott Simon, National Public Radio

“Ingrassia succeeds in fashioning well-researched, swift-paced narratives around each of these 15 select automobiles. Using colorful detail, he effectively recasts these significant driving machines in their respective cultural contexts and brings to life the eras they influenced.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A must for anyone with a passion for cars, history, or simply an interest in America’s story."—Bask Magazine

“Paul Ingrassia…is probably the best broadsheet reporter ever to cover the car business…Picking 15 vehicles as tent poles for this sprawling canvas was a good idea, and Ingrassia chose well…Any book on a topic so overwhelming as the car in America has to be more of a goad to, than a proof of, argument. And here Ingrassia has succeeded.”—Weekly Standard

"In this new book, Ingrassia traces the history of some iconic cars and how those models reflected shifts in politics, culture, and technology. He also takes readers inside the industry, skillfully navigating among the soaring tail fins, egomaniacal visionaries, and corporate intrigue that surrounded the creation of these vehicles."—Boston Globe

"Paul Ingrassia’s Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars ranges as widely and quirkily as the title suggests among the people, passions and foibles of
the automotive industry. As a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Ingrassia shared a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for writing on General Motors Co. In this book he lets out the journalistic stays, enjoying the freedom to openly needle an industry and admire its pioneers without any loss of the good reporter’s delight in detail and a fine tale."—Jeffrey Burke, Bloomberg BusinessWeek

"In Engines of Change, Mr. Ingrassia arguably does for cars and culture what David Halberstam did for a decade in The Fifties. History well researched, made alive, relevant and eminently readable."—John Lamm, The New York Times

“Using his nimble narrative gifts, Mr. Ingrassia turns the creation stories behind the Prius and other cars into gripping accounts of how visionary design, corporate competition and inventive engineering combined to produce automobiles that would come to represent an era or a mind-set.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

From the Publisher

…wonderfully entertaining…In this book [Ingrassia] draws upon his expertise covering the car business to give us a highly informed but breezy narrative history of the vehicles that have shaped and reflected American culture. Along the way he also gives us some sharp snapshots of the engineers, businessmen and ad people who helped design and promote these automobiles…
—The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani

"Historians rightly agree that the Model T Ford is the most influential and important car in American history," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ingrassia (deputy editor in chief, Reuters; Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster), who here tells the stories of 15 American cars. "The more elegant and delicate question is which car is the second most influential." Ingrassia considers autos that have changed American society or captured the spirit of the times—not just the fastest or the most famous. Even the casual student of history knows about the Model T's influence on assembly-line manufacturing and affordability for the average working family. But what about the transition of the VW, first known for being Hitler's car and later as the favored transport of hippies? Or the minivan's role in the rise of the now ubiquitous soccer mom? The epic failure of the Corvair, Ingrassia points out, had lasting effects on automobile safety, the career of Ralph Nader, and the 2000 presidential election. VERDICT While readers may debate the author's choices (no AMC Gremlin?), they'll be entertained by this appealing social history, served up with just the right amount of sly humor and nostalgia. (Photos not seen.)—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P. L., WI

Library Journal

The Ford Model T, Chevrolet Corvette, VW Beetle, Ford F-150, Chrysler minivan, and Toyota Prius are among 15 models that the author says marked important changes in the way Americans relate to their cars. With chapters that build slowly and offer fascinating insider quotes, the author describes the design, engineering, and marketing approaches that made each car successful, as well as the ego clashes and company politics behind that success. This is not a groundbreaking history of American culture over the past 100 years, but car enthusiasts will love the stories and broader context. Smooth-sounding Sean Runnette connects with these narratives in an authentic, low-key way. He’s so easy to hear that the occasional phrasing misstep is always forgiven. But with this kind of material, some listeners will wish for a performance that adds more juice to the production. T.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MAY 2012 - AudioFile

A Pulitzer Prize–winning automotive reporter's cultural history of 15 cars that helped shape American life. Car nut and Reuters deputy editor in chief Ingrassia (Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster, 2010) makes it clear that he's not writing about the best cars in American history, but the ones that have had the most impact on American culture (which also doesn't always mean American-made cars). Beginning with the most obvious choice, Henry Ford's Model T, Ingrassia proceeds to make his case for the cultural relevancy of Cadillac tail fins, the Honda Accord, BMWs, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Chrysler Minivan and more. Some of his more entertaining and informative stories are about automotive failures--e.g., hipster car-industry kingpin John DeLorean and his once-promising career at Pontiac, a tenure that ended with ugly, impractical cars and a botched cocaine deal. Ingrassia plays up the colossal technical flop that was the dangerous, rear-engine Chevy Corvair as the second-most influential car of all time, considering its unintended role as the car that sparked huge legal reforms in the automobile industry and launched Ralph Nader's career. Perhaps the book's most interesting section examines the improbable metamorphosis in public perception of the Volkswagen Beetle, which went from Hitler's favorite ride to a 1960s hippie-chic countercultural statement on wheels. The same kind of socially conscious symbolic value resurfaced decades later in the form of the hybrid Toyota Prius, the ride of choice for left-leaning, eco-friendly affluence. Ingrassia succeeds in fashioning well-researched, swift-paced narratives around each of these 15 select automobiles. Using colorful detail, he effectively recasts these significant driving machines in their respective cultural contexts and brings to life the eras they influenced. An intelligent and accessible mix of car-worship and cultural studies.

Kirkus Reviews