A Car, A Car -My Kingdom For A Car

America is the land of the automobile -that's a tired cliche that still holds true but it's difficult to say  how things are going to change. In the next few years China is ready to over take the United States in total car production and ownership. Part of the American love affair with the automobile is how the car can transcend mere transportation and becomes a rolling sculpture -a mobile statement of sell expression. I can't wait to see what the Chinese will come up with.

One thing that makes me smile is how Buick is the prestige brand in China where as in the US it's consider a bland sightly bourgeois type of car owned middle aged middle managers. I once had a used Buick that was mechanically sound but pretty beaten up with all kinds of scratches and dents. The first two letters of  Buick fell off the nameplate and we just called it the "ick".

 

It all started in a small factory on the south end of Detroit. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile but he did make the automobile affordable to almost everyone. And from there everything changed. Roads that where good enough for horses and wagons had to be paved. When people could travel further and faster merchants consolidated, stores became bigger and no one could stay in business without a parking lot. And why work in town if you can commute to a better job a few miles down the road ?

When Herbert Hoover ran for President in 1928 he promised  "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard to boot". That quote has been mangled and misused over the years but car ownership continued to grow even through the great depression.

In 1940 Stalin had secretly imported a copy of the movie The Grapes Of Wrath. Stalin had planned to distribute the film in the USSR to show how things weren't so good in the US. By the end of the film Stalin was in a fit of rage and had the movie banned. He believe it was pure capitalist propaganda -how can poor landless people still have an automobile to drive?

Stalin didn't understand -that's how America rolls.

 

Now cars are everywhere and as China is plagued with 100 kilometer traffic jams, it gets frightening to think of some of the other implications of car ownership. Even without the issue of carbon dioxide causing global climate change, cities sprawl out into huge suburbs to accommodation car ownership. Right now about 1% of all the Earth's land is under a paved road. In the United States if all the paved roads were combined in one spot it would cover an area about the size of the state of Oklahoma. What a nightmare vision that is on a hot summer's day.

Still there is a love for the the engineering prowess of people that want to explore the extremes of what's  possible and maybe even bring the automobile into the future.

Yesterday I read in the news about the British team building a rocket car (the Bloodhound) that they plan to set a new land speed record at over 1,000 miles per hour.

A 1,000 miles an hour = 447.04 meters a second or 1.609.34 kilometers per hour.

So from today's super cars might come the standard features of tomorrows production vehicles.

I just there has always be a a need for speed and power.

 People have always wanted to by masters of their world and take their dreams as far as they can go.

Some how there is nothing more iconic than taking a calculated risk and pitting yourself against the elements.

But in the end will the world be inherited by the small? 

What will it be like driving on a small planet? As more and more of the world's population urbanizes and live in mega-cities that are developing around the world, an automobile becomes less and less practical.
I can already see that trend with my two sons. Neither one is all that enthusiastic about driving. Both see driving as a chore and my oldest son is toying with the idea of living in or near New York City just so he doesn't need a car.

 Many of my "green" and environmentally aware friends think it's time to rethink and re-purpose the car.

Before the internal combustion engine dominated the automobile industry the electric car was already in production. The biggest short coming of the electric car were the batteries and limited range, which made these cars only suitable for the cities.

Henry Ford grew up on a farm and understood how big and isolated the countryside was. The original Model T had an adjustment on the carburetor so the car could run on either gasoline or grain alcohol depending if you were closer to a gas station or a moonshiner.

There is some potential in Hybrid drive trains like in the Toyota Prius. I was reading an article on several diesel hybrids that might be coming on to the market. I have a rough design for a steam powered hybrid where a flash boiler produces steam that turns a turbine powered alternator that keeps the bank of batteries charged. The batteries are the prime power source for the electric motor.

One advantage with a steam hybrid it can use a wide range of fuels, burn those fuels at atmospheric pressure (minimizes pollution) and it can be done with off the shelf technology. Anyone interested?  


Phil Ochs is one of the great singer-song writers of the 1960's - 1970's. Most of his songs are still as strong today as they were back then. Many were sharp protest songs with clever lyrics but this one song is much more lighthearted. Other Phil Ochs fans tend to dismiss this song but I like it, it sounds like Phil Ochs was having fun when he was singing it.

Phil Ochs- My Kingdom For A Car

Just in case anyone reading this blog has one -this is my dream car

It's a 1950 Willys station wagon but this body model was made from the late 1940's until the 1960's in the US and later manufactured in South America until the late 1970's. The original straight six cylinder Flathead engine was okay for it's time but I saw one these up in New England with a new Buick v-6 engine and 5 speed manual transmission. The owner said it drove like a dream and he had no intention of selling it.

There was once a book titled You Are What You Drive, in my heart I am that car.