Top Ten

1. United States of Automobility

The American dream isn’t the big house, family, white picket fence. It is the car, and what car ownership promises: automobility. Americans identify “extreme individualism of property ownership with all that is sacred in American life” (Kunstler, 28), and in America, “mobility is ostensibly a universal right; yet it has been and remains a perquisite of social, political, and economic power, insofar as its true goal is ‘not movement as such, it is access to people and facilities” (Seiler, 23). Automobility is the symbol of these two values and is the literal vehicle for American identity. Driving provides ultimate mobility and represents the ultimate expression of consumption. Cars are the ultimate expression of American culture: “automobility emerged during and as a strategic response to the crisis precipitated by the transition from proprietary to corporate capitalism in the United States” (Seiler, 6). Cars give all Americans the ability and freedom to be our own selves. A 1980s Subaru ad caters to even the poor, rural set as it depicts a veterinarian speeding through stormy weather to deliver a cow on an All-American family farm. As we face a crisis of American capitalism, cars and car companies based in Detroit (Motown) are responding by taking pride in their product: the American automobile, as evidenced in this Superbowl 2013 car commercial featuring Clint Eastwood.

2. My Car, Myself

If American Graffiti taught us anything, it’s that one’s car is an extension of one’s self. The cocky, loveable ne’er-do-well John Wilner races a flashy yellow hot rod; Steve (Ron Howard), the all-American senior class president drives a gorgeous white T-bird. Another celebrated Hollywood film, Grease, exemplifies this concept with the catchy tune “Greased Lightning,” where the car becomes the symbol and another member of the Greaser gang. The car we buy is the ultimate expression of our consumer personality. Car companies understand this, and have “encouraged the consumer’s idea that the car should be an expression of who he or she uniquely is, as competing makers segment the market, trying to carve out certain demographic groups for their different brands (Lutz and Fernandez, 67).” Just as John drives his yellow deuce coupe, soccer moms pile the team into “super-safe” SUVs with magical storage space, Mistah Fab ghost rides his yellow school bus, and Arnold Swarzeneggar zooms down the California coast in his fuel cell Hummer.

Sergey Brin (of Google) driving his highly customized pink Tesla batmobile. 

3. The Carmerican Landscape

The construction of highways and superhighways has created a landscape of sprawl. While developing suburban streets and highways, “the traffic engineer is not concerned about the pedestrians. His mission is to make sure that the wheeled vehicles are happy” (115). This car-centrism pervades city codes that enforce strict rules about how many cars a lot can fit and no longer allow living quarters above businesses. Businesses among sprawl corridors are merely “plain industrial boxes designed with no other purpose than to expedite sales of the products sold within,” leaving us with “great big noplaces…made up of many little noplaces” (Kunstler 136). If streets and highways are America’s arteries, automobiles are its lifeblood. While this makes transportation convenient for cars and buses, the sense community among neighborhoods is often sacrificed for commuter convenience. Complete Streets, an urban planning concept that designs streets for all modes of transportation—walking, biking, bussing, and driving—to create a better, more accessible community. This awesome public service announcement shows the benefits of more complete streets in Europe juxtaposed with the frustration bikers go through everyday in more conventional landscapes like Burlington, VT.  

4. The Carcoon

The car has become a kind of cocoon: a warm, secure, and private shelter. Driving can be a meditation in an “idyllic, intensely private, steel-enclosed wall of relative safety” (Seiler 139). The drive back from the office on a long day is often the only alone time many American workers get at the end of the day, and appropriately there’s a sense of tranquility that goes along with it. While driving itself can evoke a sense of calm, peaceful meditation, it can also cradle the passengers to sleep. There’s nothing like that feeling of falling asleep to a passing freeway landscape against the soothing engine vibrations. This sensation is perfectly evoked in the VW ad “Baby Blue” where a father is out on a drive, seemingly simply to keep his baby asleep and from crying. The baby begins to cry when the car stops, boasting the start-stop technology that is a “greener” technology, but the more compelling aspect is that we’ve all been lulled to sleep within a moving car.

5. Right of Passage

The climactic moments of MTV’s reality TV show “My Super Sweet 16” are always the moments when the lucky teenager’s brand new (excessively expensive) car is unveiled at the peak of their first adult party. Turning sixteen and getting a car “is a central right of passage in this country, one that stands above all for freedom from the family and the family’s schedule” (Lutz and Fernandez 20). A car liberates teenagers from authority figures while opening their world to the freedom of the open road. The automobile has been the site of many firsts: first drive, first date, first drugs, first disregard of authority. Not only is a new car liberating, but it literally gives teenagers an adult identity. It’s the first time many Americans receive an official identification card: their Driver’s License. In BMW’s “Pink Moon” Cabrio commercial, four young people ditch a party to drive around in their convertible under the stars all night. Unfortunately, however, cars are incredibly dangerous for teenagers and “nothing—no other kind of accident, homicide, suicide, or disease—is more fatal to teenagers than cars” (Lutz and Fernandez 52). Cars, while representing the ultimate form of liberating adulthood for teenagers can also, very possibly, kill them.

6. The High Co$t of Car$

The price of gas is often the scapegoat for the high expense of cars, but the real toll that cars take runs much deeper. As far as money goes, debt, car payments, parking tickets, and upkeep their expense invade yearly budgets. The alone time spent in cars decreases social interaction and encourages unhealthy, sedentary lifestyles. We are more apt to eat nutrient deficient, heart-unhealthy fast food that dots the highways. Even if one is physically active, keeping up a rigorous running schedule is difficult when car exhaust emits dangerous levels of chemicals into the air we breathe, leading to smog warnings that warn against being outside at all on a given day. Our dependency on cars is slowly killing us, “as we breath in toxins that…spew from our tailpipes…form exposure to carcinogenic gasoline on the job  [and] if we were less dependent on …a gasoline based system, we would experience much lower rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer” (Lutz and Fernandez 162). Car culture means greater scale economies, and “as our national economy [becomes] more gigantic, local economies [cease] to matter and with that, they [cease] to be communities in the most meaningful sense” (Kunstler, 180). Cars violently kill thousands of Americans every year, and all the idling in congested traffic jams only pollutes the air more (Lutz and Fernandez 92). The dangers of cars is evidenced by the tragic irony of the loss of Paul Walker, star of "Fast and Furious" franchise, in a horrible car crash. 

7. The Automobility of Minorities

Even though Automobility seemed to offer greater freedom through the freedom of driving and the open road, for many people of color, the freedom was quite limited. According to Cotton Seiler, quoting Kathleen Franz “although white travelers constructed the open road as a technological democracy, open to anyone who owned a car, they simultaneously limited access to Automobility through a system of discrimination and representation that positioned nonwhites outside the new motor culture” (Seiler 107). Hip Hop culture seems to have responded with many songs and music videos that feature cars and Automobility, especially songs that call out racial profiling and encourage defiance of authority. Success through rapping often leads these hip hop artists and musicians to get ahead, to get out of the slums and buy expensive cars. Music and car culture, in this instance go hand in hand. Many rappers and successful musicians express this success by showing off the cars that they drive. Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me” is a prime example of this—the money he receives as a result of his art allows him to drive expensive cars and party with beautiful woman. Mike Jones’ “My 6 4” is another great example of this—the video is all about his car and how it empowers him.

8. Lalaland of Cars

The film and auto industry have grown up together in the past century, and it’s no coincidence that Los Angeles, the home of the film industry, is also known for its highways. Luts and Fernandez describe the prominence of the car in movies: “the car is not just a prop, but is often the central element for character development and dramatic intrigue” in Hollywood films. What would Pulp Fiction be without Travolta and Jackson’s witty car banter and Marcellus Wallace’s near-fatal collision with Butch? Or “Clueless” without Dion and Cher’s freak out highway scene? Or Vertigo without the sprawling coastal California landscape that frames Scottie and Madeline’s intense love affair? This also applies to the landscape of Hollywood itself. The landscape of oil rigs juxtaposed by rich interiors is no coincidence: “Hollywood tehnicians were especially adept at creating interiors, a talent much in demand as the Angelene landscape became more clotted with cars, oil rigs, and absurd commercial architecture (Kunstler 210).”  This commercial by Kia Optima exemplifies that special auto-film industry relationship by going through almost every genre of film from sci-fi to spy thriller to show just how desirable the Kia Optima is.

9. We Buy Cars With Our Lymbic System and Reptilian Brain

Even though cars represent a huge financial undertaking, they are sold to us by appealing to our emotional and reptilian brains, and rarely through our neocortex. When we first start thinking about buying a car, “our checklists are often lengthy and mostly practical, but our ultimate purchases are often based on a boiling stew of rational needs, emotional wants, and impulsive acts encouraged by high-pressure sales tactics” (Lutz and Fernandez 62). Car buyers will walk into a dealership wanting a car with, say, high gas mileage, high safety ratings, plenty of storage space, etc. But when they walk out, they tend to go for the cars that look sexy and go fast. One of the most memorable scenes of Chris Paine’s “Revenge of the Electric Car” for me was when a potential electric driver looked at the Tesla vs GM’s Chevy Volt. He said that the Tesla looked sexy and like it could go fast, but that the Volt was the more practical option. He wanted both. This concept is also exemplified in a commercial for the Fiat, where a sexy Italian woman teases and cajoles a man on the street. By the end of the commercial we find out she is, in fact, a car.

10. Electric Car REVolution

Electric cars started as a threat to the auto industry and companies like GM. Today, they are the sexy and sustainable future of Automobility as we know it. As Danny DeVito (an EV1 driver) expresses in Revenge of the Electric Car, “ First of all it was the I was taking care of the planet, I wasn’t gunkin up the air. It was a fantastic ride. It was fast. I’d be zipping along at 70 miles an hour, feeling like a million bucks.” It’s a brilliant technological fix for toxic air pollution that is literally killing us. When we drive gas-fueled cars as Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez explain in Carjacked, “we are exposed to significantly more air pollution than any other environment” (Lutz and Fernandez, 168) Unlike gas guzzlers runs off clean electricity—not polluting, depleting fossil fuels, but like gas guzzlers, its sexy and goes fast. Therefore, it fits nicely into the infrastructure and culture of American Automobility while providing a viable solution to the problem of air pollution. While electric cars present themselves as the most likely solution to the toxic fuel problem, they don’t quite relieve the American addiction to Automobility. Electric cars are still automobiles that put us in debt, destroy communities, keep us on sprawling superhighways, and maintain our sedentary lifestyle.