Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment

365 Pages·2009·25.192 MB·English

by  Tom McCarthy

AuToMA NIA
Cars, Consumers, and the Environment
Tom McCarthy
Yale University Press
New Haven London
6
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory
of William McKean Brown and from the income of the
Frederick John Kingsbury Memorial Fund.
Copyright© 2007 by Tom McCarthy. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the US. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Electra and Trajan types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarthy, Tom, 1959-
Auto mania : cars, consumers, and the environment/ Tom McCarthy.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
978-o-3oo-uo38-8 (clothbound : alk. paper)
ISBN
Automobile industry and trade-United States-History-2oth century.
1.
2. Automobiles-Environmental aspects-United States-History-2oth century.
3-Consumer behavior-United States-History-2oth century. I. Title.
HD9710.U52M427 2007
338-4'762922209730904-dc22 2007014691
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
'
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For Mom and Dad
For Rory and Mac
And for Lisa

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
IX
Introduction: The Great Experiment xm
ONE The Arrogance of Wealth
TWO Foresight and Emotion 16
THREE A Monstrously Big Thing 30
FOUR An Industrial Epic 55
FIVE The Death and Afterlife of Automobiles 77
Cadillacs and Community 99
srx
SEVEN Disenchanted with Detroit 130
EIGHT If We Can Put a Man on the Moon . . . 148
NINE The One Who Got It 176
TEN Out of My Dead Hands 193
ELEVEN Small Was Beautiful 207
TWELVE The Riddle of the Sport Utility Vehicle 231
Epilogue 253
Notes 267
Index 333

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many rivers to cross ....
Researching and writing history is a solitary endeavor that requires a lot of
help along the way. Words cannot express my gratitude to those who helped me
write this book. I could not have done it without them.
First, I thank Susan Strasser, who encouraged me to take on the automobile.
My misgivings about the magnitude of this project were well founded, but she
was right that it needed to be done.
This book began as a Yale dissertation. Committee members Jean-Christophe
Agnew and the late Robin W. Winks were both incredibly helpful. Special
thanks are due my dissertation adviser, John Mack Faragher. His help with the
dissertation and professional advice over the years have been invaluable, and I
am deeply grateful. I also thank Thomas E. Graedel for allowing me to audit his
graduate industrial ecology course at the Yale School of Forestry and Environ­
mental Studies.
I have the best colleagues in the world in the History Department at the U.S.
Naval Academy. I thank you all-especially those who have helped me with
various chapters over the past five years. Thanks are also due to the reference
librarians at Nimitz Library, each of whom contributed to the book, and to Flo
Todd, academia's fastest and most patient interlibrary loan administrator. Sum­
mer grants from the Naval Academy Research Council and Faculty Develop­
ment Fund grants to acquire photographs and artwork smoothed my way down
the homestretch.
My debts to the reference librarians and curators in the collections where I
researched this book are many. All have truly been a researcher's best friend.
I began at the Automobile Reference Collection of the Free Library of Phila-
!X
Acknowledgments
X
delphia, where I thank the late Stuart McDougall and Bob Rubinstein. Thank
you, Bob Casey, Judith E. Endelman, Terry Hoover, Andrew Schornick, Linda
Skolarus, and the other great people at the Benson Ford Research Center, The
Henry Ford, for hosting and helping me over extended visits to Dearborn in
four summers. I especially thank the museum for a Clark Travel-to-Collections
Grant.
I thank the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, for an Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation Fellowship that enabled me to study the automobile side
of the California Dream for two months. I also thank Ellen G. Gartrell and
Jacqueline V. Reid at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and
Marketing History at Duke University for a 1999 J. Walter Thompson Research
Fellowship to use the J. Walter Thompson Archives and the Kensinger Jones
Papers. Thanks to Francis X. Blouin, Jr., and William K. Wallach at the Bentley
Historical Library, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, for a Mark C. Stevens
Researcher Travel Fellowship. A big thanks to the folks at the Smithsonian In­
stitution's National Museum of American History who supported my project
with a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellowship. Special thanks to Jeffrey Stine,
whose on-going support for this project I deeply appreciate, and to Pete Daniel,
Charles McGovern, Suzanne McLaughlin, Shelley Nickles, Wendy Shay, and
Roger B. White. A Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities
made possible a productive and delightful year of writing and teaching at Elon
University. Special thanks to Nancy Midgette, Jim Bissett, and my great col­
leagues in the Department of History and Geography there. Support from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Historical Associa­
tion as part of the summer institute "Rethinking America in Global Perspective"
made possible a month of research in the photograph collections at the Library
of Congress.
Many research librarians, archivists, and curators helped in shorter visits to
other collections. I extend special thanks to Dace Taube, curator at the Regional
History Collection, University of Southern California; Matthew W. Roth and
Morgan P. Yates at the archives of the Automobile Club of Southern Califor­
nia, Los Angeles; Bill Holleran, curator at the Kettering/GMI Alumni Founda­
tion Collection of Industrial History at Kettering University, Flint, Michigan;
Mark A. Patrick, curator at the National Automotive History Collection, Detroit
Public Library; Mike Smith, reference archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library,
Wayne State University, Detroit; Kevin P. Manion at Consumers Union, Yonkers,
New York; and to the librarians and curators at the Michigan Historical Cen­
ter (both library and archives), Lansing; the Special Collections Department
of the University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville; the U.S. Department of
Acknowledgments
Xl
Transportation Library, Washington, DC; the Chemical Heritage Foundation,
Philadelphia; the National Archives, College Park, Maryland; and the Library
of Congress.
Thanks to Environmental History, Michigan Historical Review, and Progress
in Industrial Ecology for permission to reprint material that first appeared in
their pages.
Thanks to Cindy Eckard for giving the manuscript a rigorous read-over and
to Colin Myers for doing the same and for help in organizing the photographs.
The technical assistance of Shane M. Bowler sharpened many of the cartoons
scanned from old magazines.
Special thanks to the whole team at Yale University Press, whose invaluable
professional expertise helped me to turn an idea and a manuscript into this
book. Thank you, Jean Thomson Black, Laura Davulis, Laura Jones Dooley,
Jessie Hunnicutt, and Matthew Laird.
My greatest debt is to my family. I deeply appreciate the love, interest, and
support of my parents, Tom and Ruth McCarthy. I thank my kids, Rory and
Mac, who always lift my heart. My greatest regret is that writing this book took so
much time away from your early years. Like most historians, I hope that in trying
to understand how this world came to be as it is I can make a small contribution
to making it a better world for you and your children. My biggest thank you is
for Lisa Dumont. Lisa has seen this project through with me from beginning to
end. She has gracefully tolerated reduced circumstances, extended absences,
and my long hours of unnatural intimacy with the computer while pursuing her
own career and raising our kids. Her help with the manuscript and photographs
has been invaluable. She has shouldered more than her share to keep our lives
going while I worked to finish this book. Thanks, kiddo.
Finally, I thank my car. Like most activities in American life, I could not have
researched this book without it. We have traveled nearly two hundred thousand
miles together. I get more than forty miles per gallon on the highway, and my
car has always tested well within emissions standards. American automakers can
make a damn good, affordable vehicle when they set their minds to it, and my
Ford Escort is proof. I'm grateful for all the good service it has given me. I'll miss
it when we finally part.
This book is finished. But there are still many rivers to cross.