Not many love affairs have maintained as high a level of passion over decades as the romance between Americans and their huge, gleaming cars. Like all long affairs, it has had its ups and downs, even periods of disenchantment, but it has always held together. More than any other purchased object, more even than other complex machines, the family car historically has been a symbol of status, power and freedom. For many citizens, few other experiences could match the exhilaration of rolling down the highway at 65 m.p.h.; fewer still could top the pride of telling the family that the latest raise would permit the purchase of a still bigger car, with air conditioning. With a car, one could live anywhere, work anywhere, travel anywhere and not have to bother about commuters' tickets or timetables. The car was something to plunge into debt for, boastfully display to friends and neighbors, anxiously take for a checkup whenever it began to cough.
To some, the affair might seem a bit ridiculous, but it was strong enough to survive many storms. Social critics might, and regularly did damn the high-powered car as a strangler of cities, fouler of the air and catalyst of a blighted landscape of junkyards, filling stations and hotdog stands. Foreigners might tempt with siren songs of durability and economy, and lure no small number of Americans into dalliance with a Volkswagen or Toyota. Even the average driver in the last decade or so might grumble at his beloved during a traffic jam or on the day that the insurance premium came due; he might actually feel a bit shamed when comparing notes with a sports-car fanatic. But he always —or nearly always—remained loyal to that sleek machine in the showroom.
Second Look. Lately, though, there have been multiplying signs that the long American romance with the big car may finally be ending. It has always been an expensive affair and even before the energy crisis, many drivers had concluded that the cost—in initial price, depreciation, repair bills—could no longer be borne. Over the past few years, unprecedented numbers of Americans have been buying smaller, cheaper autos. Now the energy crisis has focused on the U.S. car, which consumes 28% of the nation's petroleum; gasoline shortages are forcing multitudes more to take a second look at their prized possession, not as status symbol or love object but purely as a means of transportation.
What they are seeing is a two-ton, eight-cylinder behemoth built for an age when 50-m.p.h. speed limits, gasless Sundays and talk of rationing would have seemed like blasphemies. The result is that even more motorists are turning to smaller vehicles that can get them through the oil squeeze—at the likely cost of wrenching readjustments in the auto industry, the U.S. economy and the way that citizens move, live and think.
Those readjustments come closer with every week. Last week Federal Energy Czar William Simon asked gas stations to limit sales to ten gallons per customer per visit, and announced that he would make that an order once he receives legislative authority. For the moment, drivers are free to visit a string of gas stations, buying ten gallons at each one—if they can find enough open. But Simon also asked motorists to try to get along all week on ten gallons, a quantity barely sufficient to propel the average