The Four Stages of Automobile Consciousness, 1895-2012

Hi folks -- some material taken from a Powerpoint related to a lecture that I am giving at BMW-Leipzig later today. The first three pages are based on an important paper published in the American Quarterly in 1972 by Professor James Flink:

The Four Stages:

�1895-1910: From the introduction of the motor vehicle to the opening of the Ford Highland Park plant in 1910.

�1910-1958: The mass idolization of the automobile and mass accommodation to automobility.

�1958-1980: The emergence of the motorcar as a major social problem.

�1980-2012: A complex, at times ambivalent, pluralistic response reflective of race, class, political ideology, and generation

Stage 1 --  The Pioneer Era, 1895-1910

�Characterized by the rapid development of an attitudinal and institutional context that made the automobiles domination of American civilization inevitable.

�It was envisioned that within the foreseeable future a utopian horseless age would dawn

Why America where the automobile was adopted so readily?

.�Volume production commonplace

�Abundance of raw materials.

�A more equal income distribution than Europe.

�Absence of tariff barriers between states.

�The motor was always seen as cleaner safer and more reliable than the horse.

�It fit within prevailing notions of American individualism � control over the physical and social environment and as a status symbol.

Stage 2 -- the Automobile as the backbone of a consumer -oriented society

�By 1920s first in value of product, 3rd in value of exports

�The lifeblood of the petroleum industry

�One of the chief customers of the steel industry

�The biggest consumer of plate glass, rubber and lacquers 

Stage 3 -- The automobile at the the center of a religion

���at the root of America�s disproportionate reverence for automobilitythere is something profoundly sexual.  Few people give ultimate devotion to sex; their really ultimate devotion goes to religions like this one.� � theologian Martin Marty, 1958

Stage 4 -- 1980-present

�Most difficult to sort out

�Has the automobile age ended as in the 19thcentury the open American frontier became settled?

�However, the automobile remains key to America�s prosperity, as government can employ only so many and do only so much!

�The love affair was tempered by the fact that the peak of our per capita income was reached in the 1968

�Perceptions of the automobile refracted through race, class, political ideologies, and generational differences.

�Despite the critics, in general and part from the wishful thinking of bi-coastal intellectuals, Americans will always be wedded to the road and their automobiles! (They may be electric, however! And the most successful will be fun to drive.)

�It is a part of our innate restlessness and mobility.

�It provides psychological satisfactions that mass transit cannot.

�It plays into our notions of individualism and freedom, class mobility, and status.

�Many different fragmented groups will continue to love the cars they own, and to value cars from the past.