Remember when…

The car holds tremendous allure, despite the emptiness of the myth. The pervasiveness of this illusion can be found in our art, music and literature. Bruce Springsteen, one of my favorite musicians, has made a career out of writing about the magical transformative power of the car. In Bruce’s world, there are barefoot girls sitting on the hoods of Dodges and the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets. Redemption is offered beneath dirty hoods, and the afterlife should be spent in a Cadillac. How does Bruce feel about alternative transportation? Well, if your girlfriend’s mother doesn’t stop yapping, “she can take a subway, back to the ghetto at night.” Movies and television shows only reinforce this notion of the car.

The myth of the car is also perpetuated by the incessant advertising by automakers. Watch sports on any Saturday or Sunday (as I often do), and you will witness a litany of car fantasies: trucks being struck by meteors, leather-clad women on motorcycles pulling over a luxury SUV full of men, high-speed rides on endlessly turning empty roads, SUVs summiting snow-covered mountains. An outsider viewing these commercials might conclude that the purpose was to mock car owners. “You’ll never experience any of these moments, but please buy our turbo four-wheel drive car to sit in traffic everyday.” The problem is that Americans aren’t offended by these images. We all want a car that can go from 0 to 60 mph in six seconds despite the reality that we spend most car trips inching along in traffic.

My own childhood is partly defined by the cars we drove. My father was a Ford man, and so we endured a procession of lemons pushed on us by a local dealer armed with financing to fit any need. We also dabbled in foreign cars with an Opel and Datsun station wagen gracing our driveway at different times. Despite their inconsistent performance, these cars made vacations possible for us. Our vacations were usually some form of week long trip east to visit relatives, with three days spent with relatives and four days spent driving.

Once I was old enough to drive, I forged my own car memories. In high school, my brothers and I shared a well-used 1973 Pontiac Catalina. With its powerful V-8 engine, we had the fastest car at a stoplight, and if you found the right dip in the road, you could easily get airborne. The biggest selling point of the “Cat,” as it was lovingly called, was its bench seat in the front, which, it goes without saying, was quite useful on a Friday night. In college, I was one of the rare students with a car, a 1978 Chevy Vega that burned through a quart of oil every 200 miles. Still, the car was quite useful for satisfying the late night munchies and the occasional road trip.

The greatest irony in my relationship with cars is that the first car I purchased on my own was instrumental in the courtship of my wife. The car, a 1988 Mitsubishi Montero, established me, at least in my wife’s eyes, as an outdoorsy adventure-seeker, a man not bounded by the confines of civilization. She would ultimately discover that, while the car was prepared to test its mettle in the rugged outdoors, I was quite content to sit inside on weekends and watch college football. But the car did its job by getting me in the door.

Indeed, the car has become a powerful reminder of our successes in life. Each milestone is celebrated with a new car conquest. “When I get my first job, I’m going to buy my own car.” “I can’t wait for my promotion so I can buy that Lexus.” “Once the baby is born, we need to get a minivan.” “Screw it, I’m fifty and I’m buying a sports car.” The car culture is so pervasive that I fear we lack alternative symbols to satisfy our human need to signal to others our life’s achievements.

Don’t you leave my heart in misery

While an irrational attachment to a myth can be harmless and even quaint, our view of the car is anything but benign. The most troubling trend in our relationship with the car is the anti-social machismo fostered by our obsession with SUVs. As the latest object of our affection, the SUV has replaced the human-scaled hot rod and sports car and, instead of promoting the impromptu social gatherings of our parent’s generation, serves as the means by which frustrated Americans fulfill their desire to retreat from society and vent their anger with the other dehumanizing elements of our car-dominated existence. Behind the imposing façade of an SUV, mild mannered suburbanites suddenly exhibit the selfish impatience of sociopaths. If you don’t believe that people have an irrational view of their SUVs, pay attention to how many times your friends and neighbors refer to their SUV as a truck. Despite the continued transformation of these cars into uptight luxury vehicles that never leave a paved surface, SUVs still offer their entirely domesticated owners the illusion of being everyday laborers doing an honest day’s work.

Like a drug dealer trailing an addict, U.S. automakers have adroitly tapped into the inchoate need for the protection supposedly offered by the SUV by designing larger, more elaborate vehicles. Once we see that the SUV we bought two years ago is threatened by a younger, more muscle-bound sibling, we, of course, need to trade up to feel safe. We pursue this never ending quest for more safety despite the growing evidence that this arms race, which is stuffing our roads with oversized vehicles that barely fit in lanes and roads designed for more modest vehicles, is actually undermining the safety of our roads.

Ultimately, it is the car’s unique power to bring out our most selfish instincts that is the danger of this love affair. Most Americans are well aware of the destructive impact of the car on society, and yet we continue to our overuse our cars and defend our behavior as an extension of our individual rights. This glorified appliance has somehow become the avatar of the treasured American values of personal freedom and independence. As in the movies, the messy details about our corresponding responsibilities to not just ourselves but to society get edited out. We Americans love to recite our real and imagined basic rights, yet any discussion of the limitations on those rights taxes our brains. As the perfect enabler of such convenient thinking, the car has become a reliable refuge from a world in which we are increasingly being asked to take responsibility for the footprint we leave on the planet.

Come on, baby, let’s start anew

The sad consequence of our abusive relationship with the car is the closing window of opportunity to explore what remains of the open road. There is much to see outside our cities and the car is still the most practical way to get there. Only the car can bring us in touch with the remote corners of our country, and allow us to witness the majesty of natural wonders like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite or Crater Lake. Yet the car-fueled expansion of metropolitan areas is chewing up our open spaces. Our gargantuan, fuel inefficient vehicles jack the cost up of driving long distances, and create a barrier between us and nature when we finally arrive. In short, the excitement of hopping in the car to experience something new will soon cease to exist.

We need to start over by ending our superficial attachment to the car portrayed in movies and on television, and reacquaint ourselves with the car that sits in our driveway: a simple metal box with the power to take us places that our feet and legs can’t. Magic and romance are aplenty as you gaze out over the Black Hills of South Dakota or stare up at the towering redwoods of Northern California. As with any chauffeur, the car offers nothing to this intimate encounter, and should assume its rightful place in the background, awaiting its next adventure.