GloboCars: THE NEXT CENTURY : Culture : The Global Village’s Ultimate Fetish : Throughout the world, cars are far more than mere transport. People are conceived, born, eat, work, even die in them.
Dan Gurney, a championship driver from Le Mans to Indianapolis who now builds winning race cars in Santa Ana, thinks every time capsule should include an ignition key.
“Then,” he says, “in 2094 somebody would recover it, recall the importance of the car and say, ‘This, not the dog, was man’s best friend.’ ”
French essayist Jean-Francis Held has taken that thought deeper, writing in a 1990 UNESCO study that from its indelible position in literature, movies, art, business, social progress and national decay, the automobile exemplifies man--and vice versa.
True. Rattletrap East German Trabants were a symbol of totalitarianism, then of German reunification. It’s no coincidence that the wood-and-leather interiors of Jaguars and Rolls-Royces are suggestive of the comforts of a British gentlemen’s club. The gray, heavy Mercedes-Benz personifies the stereotypical mind-set of Germany, and, with their Day-Glo paintings, flags and tassels, “jeepneys” are a rolling folk art unique to the Philippines.
America’s passages have always been linked to symbolic automobiles. The Roaring ‘20s belonged to Packard, the BMW was a yuppie car and baby boomers drive Volvos. Rebels without causes favored hot-rod coupes, and later cruisers flexed their Dodge and Mustang muscle cars. In the ‘90s, mini-trucks with trick hydraulics memorialize the hip-hop urban culture.
So, essayist Held suggests, if a collection of automobiles was preserved in a garage-tomb after a nuclear cataclysm, “some skillful archeologist . . . would be able to deduce from them everything that we were.”
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The Americans, for instance. Americans give their cars names, religiously wash them on weekends and, say the sociologists, generally treat their Toyotas like pets. Baby shoes and St. Christopher medals dangling from rearview mirrors are talismans to keep us, and our cars, safe. Vanity license plates are a form of jewelry, psychologists say. And any man cruising his stuff--whether in a ’32 Ford hot rod or a Range Rover that will never tread mud--usually is playing peacock to the opposite sex.
We all have our favorites. Our President has said his most prized possession is a blue, six-cylinder 1967 Ford Mustang convertible he bought from his brother for $3,000.
Los Angeles, with its freeways, was made for cars. As a nation, we are spending $176 billion a year buying cars, $150 billion to fuel them and $60 billion to insure them.
Some of us were conceived in cars, born in cars, eat in them, work in them and cover about 2 trillion miles a year in them. Each year, more than 40,000 Americans die in them.
The relationship is intense and not without a downside. Psychologists say cars are steel bubbles obviating contact with other humans. Freeways avoid town centers, polarize cities and erode our sense of community. Without cars, we might hear the birds again, there could be air without particles and no drive-by shootings.
Yet, as individuals and nations, the world continues to elevate the car as a fetish.
“It’s a pretty complex gestalt,” acknowledged Robert Cumberford, a former GM designer and columnist with Automobile magazine. “They are still, to me, inefficient, unreasonable objects far from what they could be . . . but also a powerful icon, a powerful operating force for an enormous number of people.
“It represents, to me, a freedom, an ability to go where I want to go, when I want to go. It’s also a cozy little tin house you take with you. . . . Always, a car offers the possibility of endless adventures in distant places. And you’re just not going to get that from public transportation.”
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The passion is no weaker in Germany, where the recent recession has seen some purists moving to less expensive houses rather than selling their precious cars. For citizens born to the mechanical precision of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche and Audi, driving and not the destination is the thrill of car travel. There are no speed limits on the autobahns, and German motorists typically cruise in excess of 100 m.p.h. In town, drivers are noticeably aggressive and totally unforgiving. Said one Californian after a day behind the wheel in Berlin: “This is war in the streets.”
As Americans have the powerful National Rifle Assn. protecting their rights to own, bear and fire guns, Germans have the almighty All German Automobile Club lobbying against speed limits. The auto club issues bumper stickers to its members: “Free Driving for Free People.”
Throughout Eastern Europe, car ownership and traffic volumes have doubled in the four years since the fall of communism. With a severe housing shortage, the nouveaux riches have few ways of flashing their status beyond buying expensive cars. Favorites are the Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche and Alfa Romeo. But taxation is excessive, and so are fees for plates and insurance--on the premise that anyone who can afford a Mercedes can afford the equivalent of a month’s pay to register it.
Driving schools in Eastern Europe are quick to flunk students, who are then ordered to take another expensive course of training. One woman in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, complained she had taken a 70-hour training course 23 times and still hadn’t earned a license.
In Western Europe, the car culture is more settled, but not what it once was. As the birthplace of Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Jaguar and Land Rover, Britain was a crucible of the automotive world. But Jaguar is now owned by Ford; GM controls Vauxhall; BMW recently bought Rover, and German wooing of Rolls-Royce and Bentley continues.
“With Rover gone, there are now no mass-production British car manufacturers under British ownership,” noted Phil Llewellin, an automotive critic for London’s Independent newspaper. “More and more these days, when I write about the great traditions of British sports cars, I’m writing about Bentleys winning at Le Mans, and that was decades before I was born.”
Only a cottage sports-car industry remains, he says, one that includes such handcrafting companies as Griffith-TVR, Caterham and Morgan, with its work force of elderly artisans “happily turning out about 1.75 cars a week.”
Peculiarly British is the company car. More than 60% of the automobiles in Britain are registered to companies that dispense them to ranking employees as perks. “That way, you can be seen in a 3-Series BMW that otherwise you could never afford,” said Gordon Bruce, a London automotive publicist. “It relates to keeping up with the Joneses as an unspoken statement of your position and worth. People will actually work harder to get a better company car, because it’s worth more as an outside symbol than a raise.”
Despite this vanity, there are no vanity plates in Britain. If luck of issuance produces a plate that might make a statement for someone, commerce flourishes. A recent advertisement listed for sale plate “1 BW.” If your name is Bertie Witherspoon or you are the CEO of British Wedgwood, the plate would be a steal. For $27,750.
In Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, the car culture is as strong as in the automotive heartlands. Brand loyalty to Ford is almost a faith in Argentina. The manufacturer established a subsidiary there in 1913, rose to claim 43% of the market and saw its distributorships become community institutions.
“They say in the interior that there was the church, the army and the Ford distributorship,” noted Rodolfo Ceretti, a Ford executive in Argentina.
Ford’s Falcon was prince of the pampas. It won stock car championships in a country whose national torch has been held high by racing immortals Juan Manuel Fangio and Carlos Reutemann. Almost half a million Falcons were manufactured in Argentina from 1961 to 1991. Now, Argentina has a new love. The Ford Escort, naturally.
India, a nation of 900 million people, is served by fewer than 2.5 million cars. Vast numbers of Indians have never been inside an automobile.
Within the middle-class precincts of Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore, automobiles are a home-grown parade of oddities. One is the cockroach-shaped, peppy but fragile Maruti 800. There’s the Contessa Classic, the marriage of a British-built Vauxhall and an Isuzu engine. And the Ambassador, patterned on a 1950s Morris Oxford and the limousine of choice for India’s elite.
But a new era approaches. Duties on imports are being reduced. Alliances are forming--among them Hindustan Motors with General Motors, Premier Automobiles with Peugeot--that will put the country on new wheels.
In the Middle East, old, not new, is in. The Gaza Strip, for instance, is a place of neglected and potholed roads, of the promise of autonomy in the ongoing peace talks with Israel. The strip’s two auto dealerships closed in 1967, casualties of that year’s Arab-Israeli War. In this battered territory, the king of the car cult for 900,000 largely poor Arabs is the Peugeot 404, the older the better.
“The car is like us--tough, reliable and strong,” said taxi driver Kamal Abu Hlail.
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The weekly Souk Sayarat--which takes place on a dirt field that doubles as a soccer pitch--is Gaza’s only used-car market. It forms each Saturday and is filled with scores of Peugeot 404s in varying states of proud decay.
“In our situation, you can’t own a better car,” noted another owner. “It’ll take you anywhere. Anyone can fix it. And it’s a lot faster than a donkey.”
In Israel, the standard of living is rising, and the automobile is along for the ride. The number of cars at the end of 1992 was up 9% from 1991. And fatal accidents have increased accordingly.
Each country is distinct in the world of autos, and some present surprises.
* For all its power as a big-time automobile producer, Japan is in the minors when it comes to enjoying cars. There are few freeways. Tokyo is a city of 12 million people built to handle half that number, and traffic is bumper to bumper.
But despite the relative lack of room to move around, interest in four-wheel-drive vehicles and camper vans is growing. Commercial parks have opened where owners of 4WD vehicles can enjoy off-road travel without leaving cities.
“Five years ago, we never had RV shows,” commented businessman and car enthusiast Hiroshi Soma. “Now, so many people want to go see camping shows.”
* France is also a country with a new affection for sports utility vehicles and campers--and a nation choking on vehicles, with 1.6 million cars competing each day for Paris’ 1.3 million parking spaces. Traffic jams cost the city $300 million a year in wasted gasoline, particularly irritating when gas costs $3.50 a gallon.
In response, scooters and motorcycles are replacing Renaults and Citroens in French affections. A recent study showed that 85% of all scooter riders are executives who live in cities. And in Paris, cycles and scooters are considered bon chic, bon genre. Rough translation: preppy.
* In Italy, the birthplace of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati, sales of designer sports cars are flopping, with fewer on the streets than are seen abroad.
Although Italy is now one of the richer countries in the world--its gross national product exceeds all Latin America’s--scarred and battle-wise subcompact cars are a family norm.
* Brazil, another nation famous for world racing champions--Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna--is slightly infamous as one of only two countries--the other is Mexico--still building Volkswagen Beetles.
Credit President Itamar Franco, a self-styled man of the people, who publicly swore affection for the enduring people’s car and urged its return. Last summer, the Beetle was back in production in Brazil.
There was an early frenzy of sales, but it hasn’t lasted. Beetles priced at $7,000 currently are piling up at dealerships.
Yet if there is one icon among all the automotive idolatry, it is the Beetle. Demanded by Adolf Hitler, designed by Porsche, the historic little car has remained in production somewhere in the world for more than half a century. Twenty-one million Beetles have sold, for a world record. That is 5 million units more than Henry Ford’s Model T.
Who knows? One day they might stuff a Beetle into a time capsule.
