Defending Detroit
By RICHARD H. ROVERE BEGGING the Editor's pardon, I rise to the de- /fence of the American automobile. Every- body seems to be knocking it. In a bold assault on conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste, the Spectator for March 28 blames the automobile for the recession here. It says our cars are 'inconvenient and ugly' and that we buy them, in disregard of our real needs and against our better judgment, because advertising creates a 'social pressure' to keep getting longer, lower, shinier, costlier ones. The Spectator is not alone in saying all this. The current New Yorker carries an article by E. B. White, a wise man, making some of the same points. I turn to the Reporter and find in it a learned piece by a lady economist saying it all over again—cars too big, too ex- pensive, too showy, too much a 'status symbol.' And the current Time, which, like the New Yorker, is fat with advertising of the latest models, brings me the same message—in Time's customary self-righteous way. The automobile is no longer 'chiefly for transportation' but bauble for 'prestige buyers.' (I seem to recall that back in the Twenties and Thirties, when the auto- mobile was 'chiefly for transportation,' it was held to be the principal cause of a grievous de- cline in morals. It was a mobile den of iniquity.) It must take considerable brass for anyone on Time, which builds circulation by spreading the word that the most successful and important people in the country can't get along without it, to look down his nose at 'prestige buying.' But, then, where would we journalists be if the pot couldn't call the kettle black? Nowhere.
The language used in all these discussions comes from the new sociologists, by way of Thorstein Veblen. The 'status symbol' is about of the same vintage as the Chrysler Corporation's Plymouth Belvedere. This is not to be held against it I am sure these terms have what a new sociologist would call 'functional value,' and I think they may be helpful in explaining certain odd features of American life and the American economy. Moreover, I do not doubt that snob appeal (a phrase we used before it became a symbol of status to say 'status symbol') has been exploited with particular success by automobile salesmen. New York But does it explain, as the Spectator leader would have us believe, everything that Detroit does? Is it a fact that 'social pressure, ruth- lessly enough applied, can become too strong to resist; and the result is that American families are stuck with 'automobiles of a type they do not really want'?
At a rough guess, I would say that not one in twenty-five Americans considers his car as an indicator of his position on what Time calls 'the stratified pyramid of personal material progress.' This does not mean that he thinks of his car solely as a piece of machinery that carries him from one place to another. It is a good deal more than that—just as a house is more than a shelter and just as clothes arc more than a cover for nakedness. Many Americans, I have no doubt, give more thought to their cars than to their houses and choose them more carefully than they choose their clothes. This may sound depraved, but consider, first, the fact that many of us live a great part of the time in our cars-and, second, the fact that we like them. A great number of us like them in the way that a great number of us like boats or horses or gardens, and some of us spend what is doubtless an inordinate amount of time tending them. There is a spot on a creek .near my home where every warm Saturday and Sunday dozens of people are to be found scrub- bing their cars by hand with the plentiful water that may be dipped along the bank. I have a friend, formerly a petty criminal and an anything but petty drinker, who vowed, when he gave up thieving 'and liquor, that he would put four or five dollars a week (the money he'd once spent on whisky) into new gadgets for his old car; the car bristles with chromium doodads that are in my eyes both superfluous and ugly, but the point is that these investments sustain him in his effort to avoid sliding back into waywardness. He lavishes'affection on his 1949 Chevrolet.
It may be -that our cars are 'ugly,' though I know of one -that is not—my 1957 Buick con- vertible, which seems to me a fair match :esthetically for anything made in England, France, Italy or Germany. It is, I think, an ex- tremely handsome automobile, and 1 would not for a moment concede that there was anything 'inconvenient' about it. I learned a bit about automobiles ten years ago, when, under the in- fluence of writers who were, pummelling us with the arguments for smaller cars, I was an advocate of the Austin and the American Crosley. For two years, I had a four-cylinder Crosley that must have weighed only a third of what my present car weighs and was in most ways more economical to run. The experience taught me that American cars make a good deal of sense in terms of American geography and American life. The.Cnosley was afgood car and quite satisfactory for trips of fifty miles or less, but one 600-mile drive was .enough to convince me that .there was a case to be made for the standard American cars. Last summer, in .our Buick, my wife and I and our three children crossed and recrossed the con- tinent. It was my first long automobile trip since. the war, and my pre-war memories had led me to dread the long days on the road. They turned out to be a .delight—largely, I -think, 'because of the improvement in cars since the war. I valued the speed of the Buick in getting us quickly across the baking and boring plains, the power in getting us over the mountains, the roominess that made long days across the endless prairie highways bearable. I suppose that one adult or two might have done about as well in a European car, but I doubt if I would be here today if I had had to do it with three children in a Hill man.
I am sure the manufacturers hornswoggle us and sell us a lot of useless trim and gadgets. (I find the :Buick's 'power windows' not a con- venience but an annoyance.) But I think our cars —putting to one side such aberrations sure to pass as power windows and tail fins—are by and large what we Americans want and need. The type of car that has made the greatest gains in recent years is the station wagon, a modified truck, and for large families outside the urban centres an admirably practical conveyance. There was a time when the station wagon had a touch of the infra dig. It wasn't quite the thing to go .. calling in. But it was sensible, and the demand for it grew, and the manufacturers raised its status by calling it a 'suburban,' and now it is very chic indeed—as well as being eminently sensible.
Perhaps Detroit is the centre of infection at the moment. And no doubt there is a lot of baloney in our talk about cars and a lot of wasted metal in the cars themselves. But I do not think that many of us have been buying cars we do not want, and 1 do not think there is any- thing reprehensible in wanting the cars we have. As for the imported sports cars and the ,Volks- wagens, they are fine for city dwellers who want to get out of town for a weekend, and the sports cars are especially fine for young men who wish to cut a figure on their side of the pyramid. There is today no 'status symbol' quite as rich in sym- bolic value as a little white Jag with the top down.
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