California on Wheels : A Driving Passion for Life Style

The bets are down and the cars are braced for the race.

A 1967 El Camino and a 1955 Chevrolet rock and roar, enveloped in a hellish fog of exhaust and smoke from the furious rotation of big slick tires burned sticky for better traction. Out of the darkness appears an elfin girl with flashing blond hair waving a red bandanna. Two drivers named Danny and “Seaweed” are off, reaching speeds of more than 100 m.p.h. on a well-traveled street in the middle of the nation’s second-largest city.

It is dangerous and illegal and certainly cause for wonder: Racing cars in a city where the workaday commuter is lucky to average 20 m.p.h., where the combustion engine is becoming the modern equivalent of Typhoid Mary. The street racing, which goes on in half a dozen places around town, is indicative of a condition that has afflicted Southern Californians since they abandoned one of the best public transit systems in the world in favor of Henry Ford’s $300 Model T and the Sunday drive.

Perils Haven’t Cooled Passion

Smog, gridlock, freeway shooters, insurance rates and permit parking may cause people to leave town for Seattle or San Luis Obispo. But the perils of driving, so far, have not been enough to cool Southern California’s passion for the automobile. We keep on showing them, racing them and customizing them. We keep on setting design standards and buying cars in greater quantity and diversity than anywhere else in the country.

“Sometimes, it staggers my imagination that people are still so crazy about their cars,” said Gerald P. Hirshberg, vice president of Nissan’s U.S. design headquarters near San Diego. “You watch them crawling along the freeway. They could walk faster. Then, you look at their cars, clean, gleaming, polished objects of love. It’s hard to think of Californians without them.”

As with movies and earthquakes, car culture is part of the dreamscape, the mixture of history and fantasy, attraction and repulsion that gives the region its peculiar identity. Southern California has been shaped by cars, and cars have been shaped by Southern California. Freeways, McDonald’s, Sunset Strip, valet parking, cruising, car phones, drive-by homicides--all defining landmarks.

Seventy years ago, the automobile gave people the freedom to live where they wanted, providing Los Angeles with its expansive profile. Today, with smog foreshadowing a perpetual, noxious twilight, an anti-car culture threatens to recast the region, as people are required to drive less and urged to reconsid er where they live and how they get to work.

Meanwhile, the romance of the road goes on:

Joan Koravos and Larry Guzzetta, a middle-aged El Toro couple who met while driving home on the Santa Ana Freeway, returned to the freeway last month and got married in a stretch limousine.

“I tell my friends to forget the singles bars,” Koravos said. “If you’re looking for the right person, just drive the freeways and smile.”

9% Sales Increase Seen

Longo Toyota of El Monte recently predicted a 9% net gain in sales, a sign that the dealer is on the way to leading the nation in new car and truck sales for the 11th year in a row. Founder Dominic Longo attributed the success, in part, to a company code of discipline that forbids salesmen from swearing, smoking, chewing gum, wearing loud shirts or sunglasses.

Takashi Oka, a Nissan design executive, traveled from Tokyo to Laguna Niguel in Orange County to live with a family in the hope of designing a new luxury car that is perfectly tuned to the wants of the American consumer.

Cal Worthington, perhaps the most enduring symbol of the Southern California car market, has taken the car culture on the road, extending his empire of Ford and Dodge dealerships--along with his “aw, shucks” stage presence and menagerie of animals, all named Spot--from Long Beach to Texas to Alaska.

Boon to Economy Since 1930

Preliminary work is under way to double-deck the Harbor Freeway, and plans are under study to turn the Los Angeles Riverbed into a commuter expressway.

Cars were fueling the Southern California economy as early as 1930, when the region already had more automobiles per capita than anywhere else in the world. Today, Los Angeles and Orange counties alone account for 13% of all new car and truck sales in the country. There are more dealers and designers here, more varieties of automobiles and more accessories bought and sold.

Auto market analysts J. D. Power and Associates once noted that if Southern California were a state it would rank first in new car and truck sales.

When the auto age was in its infancy, Southern California was a market in search of the automobile. The region was settled largely by comfortably fixed emigres from the East and Midwest who could afford cars and who wanted to live in the country.

On the Track to Suburbs

The city’s ambitious rail network, built during the first decade of this century with profits from the sale of adjacent real estate, provided the original impetus for suburban sprawl. But in the coming years the car allowed people to settle in the spaces between the rail lines and sped the development of more remote corners, such as the San Fernando Valley.

In the 1920s residents rejected a proposed 110-mile system of subway and elevated trains in favor of a comprehensive street-expansion program, including the city’s first grade-separated parkway, which was to connect Pasadena with downtown and become the precursor of the city’s first freeway. In 1937, the Southern California freeway system was proposed.

The automobile influenced Southern California culture--or, rather, created a culture of its own--in a variety of ways.

Influence on Architecture

It helped inspire the region’s most distinctive architecture from Bullock’s Wilshire with its porte- cochere facing the parking lot, to the original McDonald’s, to the nation’s first drive-in church (the early version of today’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove), to the freeways’ spiraling interchanges.

Architectural historian Thomas Hines has written that, after Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ford may have been the most important influence on Southern California architects. One of those architects was Richard Neutra, who designed the Garden Grove church and who began building houses in Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s when the city’s infatuation with the automobile was at full throttle.

Neutra built folding bus doors into his own Los Angeles home. He paid homage to Ford in another house by using Model T headlights as stairway light fixtures. Streamlined, efficient and idiosyncratic, Neutra’s designs reflected the spirit of the burgeoning auto age in Southern California.

Carport Replaced Garage

The car also changed the way people used their homes. The detached garage, often a shed at the rear of the property, was replaced by the carport, and the carport leading into the kitchen began to usurp the role of the front door. By the 1930s, the spacious front porch, the vestibule and the parlor, all symbols of a gracious and formal way of life, were becoming obsolete as Wright, Neutra and others introduced homeowners to a more informal, suburban way of life.

But, from the days of the Model T to the era of the catalytic converter, there was a dark side to car culture.

In his recent book, “The Automobile Age,” James J. Flink wrote that by the early 1920s, local authorities were worried that the automobile was undermining public morals.

Car Theft in 1920s

Flink, an Irvine-based auto historian, noted that car theft emerged in the 1920s as the state’s most profitable crime and that, by the end of the decade, 35% of the inmates of one state reform school were serving time for stealing cars.

A report by a Los Angeles County police official in the 1920s made note of “numerous complaints of night riders who park their automobiles along country boulevards and indulge in orgies,” while the police chief of Pasadena complained of having to use most of his squad cars to deal with “the astounding number of couple lovers” parked along dark streets.

It was not until the city’s freeway system was under construction in the early 1940s that people began to suspect a connection between the thickening brown haze and the sickly aspect of the orange crop. The term “smog” was coined and, for several years, officials blamed it on refineries and on atmospheric inversion. There was a proposal to break up the inversion by blowing cold air through it from helicopters, and another scheme to suck out the smog with giant fans or “smoqueducts.”

Automobile Defended

Speaking in 1949, Louis McCabe, Los Angeles’ first smog commissioner, warned against “the folklore” that would primarily blame the automobile for air pollution, according to The Atlantic magazine.

More than a quarter of a century passed before state officials required auto makers to install catalytic converters to reduce the hydrocarbon emissions that with sunlight create ozone, the ingredient in smog most dangerous to plant and human life.

It is possible to argue that the influence of cars on the region has been exaggerated. There is only one auto assembly plant in Southern California--a General Motors operation in Van Nuys. Drag racing was born on the back roads of the Appalachian South. The first drive-in restaurant was built in New Jersey, the first drive-in mortuary in Atlanta. Freeways did not define the city’s boundaries. They were built in the 1940s long after the trolley tracks formed the grid upon which much of the city was developed.

The Conspiracy Theory

There is also the theory that the automobile culture was forced on a city that had been happily dependent on a vast and efficient system of public transport. According to this theory, the city’s rail transit system fell victim to a conspiracy by General Motors, Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tire & Rubber to buy up and ultimately dismantle the city’s streetcar lines.

The conspiracy theory is still hotly argued, but is countered with evidence that the public began forsaking the streetcars long before GM and its partners took apart the Pacific Electric Co. in the 1950s. James Flink and other transportation scholars point out that Pacific Electric was losing money and patronage as early as 1930. They blame the streetcar’s fading popularity on rising fares, poor maintenance and society’s love affair with the automobile.

Killed by Private Car

“The culprit was the . . . private passenger car, which in the 1950s began making dramatic inroads into ridership on all modes of public transit,” Flink wrote.

Since the early 1920s, when a designer named Harley Earl worked from modeling clay molds to design $25,000 custom cars for celebrities such as Fatty Arbuckle and Tom Mix--Mix’s car had a saddle mounted on the hood--Southern California has been a laboratory for automotive style.

The auto industry routinely speaks of the “California car.” Years ago, it was the “woody.” Later came the van conversion, the compact pickup and the modular compact, like the Nissan Pulsar, with interchangeable body parts, and, this year, the two-seater Mazda Miata convertible.

Besides being designed in Southern California, the California car, when it catches on, seems to make a statement about this part of the country that appeals to people elsewhere.

Lure of the Open Road

“It’s the appeal of the open road, the wind in your teeth, tooling along Highway 1,” said Mark Jordan, one of the Miata’s designers. “All that sense of old-fashioned freedom and adventure boiled down into a single automobile. That’s . . . our notion of the California car.”

In Japan, simply identifying a car with Southern California can be good for business. For example, said Hirshberg: “There is a special, sporty version of the Pulsar sold in Japan called the “LA Version” which is always advertised with a surfboard in the back.”

In November, Nissan plans to unveil Infiniti, a car that grows out of design executive Takashi Oka’s experience living with a Southern California family.

Oka spent several weeks living in Laguna Niguel with what Nissan hoped would be a typical American upper-middle-class family at work and play, said Laura Fox, a Nissan publicist. Fox said that after exposure to the family’s political views (conservative), its work habits, shopping and leisure activities, Oka came away convinced that what the American family needed was an antidote for stress.

The Pursuit of Comfort

Nissan’s answer is a $38,000 luxury car in which the pursuit of comfort assumed the aura of a spiritual quest.

“One of the most noticeable things about the car is the size of the door handles,” she said. “They are very large. Mr. Oka noticed that the door handles of American homes are quite large, and he wanted to make the statement that entering the car was like entering the home. He also developed a concept called unified tactile sense. He wanted every piece of leather in the car to come from the same cowhide because it is more soothing to the driver if everything feels the same.

“For a while,” Fox said, “the word Zenlike was being used a lot in talking about the Infiniti.”

Risks in Defining Taste

Nissan executives have expressed confidence in the Infiniti’s nationwide appeal, although they admit that there is always a slight risk in tailoring a car to suit Southern California tastes. When it comes to matters Zenlike, this part of the country has been known to drive to the sound of a different mantra.

Although designers create their versions of the California car, it never seems quite enough to their principal audience. Southern Californians have been tinkering with cars since the inventive Earl created the mother-in-law seat (over the right rear fender).

Grey Baskerville, senior editor of Hot Rod magazine, estimates that 20% of the $1 billion spent each year around the country on specialty auto parts--from hood scoops to wire wheels to stereo systems--is spent in Southern California.

Pomona Swap Meet

The mecca for this market is the Pomona swap meet, the weekend brainchild of postal worker and antique-car collector George Cross. It is held seven Sundays a year on a dusty, often sweltering stretch of midway at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds, where it is not unusual for 25,000 to 30,000 people to gather.

So many people showed up at the last meet that Cross was forced to close the gates by 9:30 a.m. People come from as far away as Florida to buy and sell parts and to display their cars in a slow-moving promenade of restored Model As, ‘60s muscle cars, Baja Bugs and customized Corvettes.

Cross’ biggest headache these days is limiting what one of his assistants referred to as the “Tupperware crowd” to make room for all of the auto enthusiasts.

No More Frying Pans

“When we started 14 years ago, we’d get maybe 150 people. A lot of them would be selling frying pans, hoses, jewelry, you name it. Now, I just don’t have the space,” Cross said.

Thousands of miles from most of the nation’s major population centers, Los Angeles was never destined to rival Detroit in the manufacture of motor vehicles. Nevertheless, cars are big business here.

The nation’s leading Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Acura, Mercedes, BMW, Buick and Jeep-Eagle dealers are in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and the automobile is an important underpinning of the local economy.

The ports here unload up to 1 million cars a year, taking in $20 million in the process and employing more than 200,000 people to handle the imports. In Los Angeles, 10% of the city’s taxable transactions involve cars, trucks and related supplies, according J. D. Power and Associates.

Industry Supports El Monte

“The automobile business is our single most important source of revenue. We have $10 million in reserves and auto tax revenues are a large component of that,” said Gregory Korduner, administrative officer of El Monte, a town of 95,000 and the home of Longo Toyota. Competition for auto dealers led some municipalities to offer to write down the cost of land, to make interest-free construction loans and to ease zoning restrictions.

Nonetheless, dealers describe this market as the nation’s toughest. Jack Brewer, a Porsche Audi dealer, with outlets in both San Diego and Denver, says that to stay competitive in this market he has spent money and taken risks he wouldn’t consider in Denver.

Hiring an interior designer who specialized in hotels and resorts, Brewer said he spent $5 million creating a high-fashion dealership complete with a white floored repair shop built to look like a hospital operating room.

“In Colorado,” Brewer said, “I’d never think about same-day delivery of a car. Here, it’s the car now even before the credit’s been approved.”

Dramatic Changes Expected

Amid the Gold Rush aura that envelops the Southern California auto economy, many people in the business acknowledge that there must be dramatic changes in the vehicles we drive and in the ways we drive them.

“There are limits to the mobility and the freedom that the car gave us, and those limits are closing in,” said Hirshberg at Nissan. “The mood has swung from exhilaration to frustration to anger. Obviously, those of us in the business have got to grapple with the problems.”

Some changes already are being contemplated. In its 20-year master plan, the regional Air Quality Management District has recommended banning drive-through services, from banks to burger stands.

Auto Habit Under Attack

Earlier this summer, UCLA invited a dozen of the state’s most distinguished transportation scholars to a symposium on the automobile. They talked about breaking the auto habit by putting an end to inexpensive parking, encouraging solo drivers to share their car with people who can’t afford to own automobiles, improving public transit and building houses close to offices.

Martin Wachs, the professor of urban planning who organized the event, said about 160 people attended the symposium.

It’s about the same number of people who show up at the Carl’s Jr. drive-in at Sepulveda and Venice in West L.A. on Friday nights to show off their 400-plus cubic inch “big block” engines, their $2,000 antique wheels or their trunk loads of hydraulic equipment--$3,000 worth of pumps and batteries per car--that can kick a 1983 full-size Pontiac a foot in the air from a dead stop.

Horsepower Fuels Talk

There isn’t much talk of fuel efficiency or ride-sharing or parking bans at Carl’s. There, the conversation runs to horsepower, differential and the relative merits of nitrous oxide, a power booster than can give a street racer an additional 100 horses under the hood--if he can stomach the risk of engine disintegration.

Carl’s is the weekend haunt of Danny Valdez, a 20-year-old mechanic who owns a quick El Camino. Like his friends, like the thousands of young people who gather at drive-ins around the region, Danny is hooked on cars in a way that the transportation scholars may not fully appreciate.

“I race cars because it’s dangerous,” he said on a recent Friday, “and because I’d rather spend money on a car than waste it on drugs.”

As Danny talked amid the sounds of revved engines, the boom of oversize car speakers and the squeal of slick tires, an old adversary approached him and quietly challenged him to a race. Danny thought it over, complained he was having carburetor trouble.

“I don’t know, man. It’s just not running too good.”

“Hey, man,” the other fellow persisted. “I’ll give you the move (a head start). I’ll even let my girlfriend drive.”

That did it. The ultimate taunt. Danny nodded, and the two men headed for their cars.