(6 of 10)
A few years later, the whole country began going "Poop-poop." Auto production in the U.S. soared from 124,000 in 1909 to 1,500,000 in 1916, and by 1925 there were 17 million cars on the road. Those were golden years for the motorcar, with as many as 150 companies turning out a rich proliferation of broughams, phaetons, roadsters and touring cars. The number of manufacturers dwindled to just four in the 1960s, but the number of cars multiplied; under the pressure to look newer, more luxurious and more comfortable every fall, they began turning into what Writer John Keats was later to describe as the "insolent chariots." Bodies grew longer and lower, headlights doubled, sculptured trunk decks sprouted monstrous tail fins. Bucket seats were reimported from Europe, steering wheels were redesigned to keep from impaling drivers in crashes — and gas mileage dropped.
Eventually, says Cultural Historian James Funk, "the auto replaced the frontier as the shaping force for all our American institutions and values." People gained unprecedented geographic and social mobility; the Okies, for example, could not have left the Dust Bowl for the promised land of California in the 1930s without their jalopies. Suburbs sprawled into formerly unreachable open land as the newly mobile middle class fled the cities, leaving behind a huddle of poor. A whole drive-in economy of motels, movie theaters, groceries, banks and hamburger stands sprang up. From the bank to the courthouse, every institution was radically changed.
Autos today account for 30% of all consumer debt, and auto-related cases — traffic offenses, civil damage suits, drunken driving raps and the like — constitute an estimated 57% of the cases clogging U.S. courts.
Escape Route. For generations of young people, getting a driver's license has become a rite of passage into adult hood — and an escape route from the clutches of family and community. To day, millions of drivers have become emotionally and physically so dependent on driving that getting unhooked will be super-painful. Don Kelley, a 33-year-old show business agent in Los Angeles, on one recent day spent three of his nine working hours driving his Cadillac 232 miles — from home to office and then to a booking agency, to an airport to pick up a rock band, to their hotel to drop them off,-to a barbecue-beef stand for lunch, to a record-company head quarters, to a recording studio, and finally to a cocktail party. Tooling home after all that, Kelley mused: "I guess I could do more business on the phone, but I'm in a business that is too phone-oriented already. It's the people who make the personal contacts who are the ones remembered. Car pools leave me cold. If I have to ride in one I will, but I'll keep a small car at the office."
For many Americans, doing without a car—or even using it less—would mean economic hardship. Tony Garner, a 32-year-old manufacturers' representative in Martin's Landing, Ga., put some 32,000 miles in business and recreational driving on his 1973 Corvette Sting Ray, which gets about 11