ABSTRACT
The postwar years brought unprecedented prosperity to the United States, as color televisions, stereo systems, frost-free freezers, electric blenders, and automatic garbage disposals became basic equipment in the middle-class American home. But the best symbol of individual success and identity was a sleek, air-conditioned, high-powered, personal statement on wheels. Between 1950 and 1980, when the American population increased by 50 percent, the number of their automobiles increased by 200 percent. In high school the most important rite of passage came to be the earning of a driver’s license and the freedom to press an accelerator to the floor. Educational administrators across the country had to make parking space for hundreds of student vehicles. A car became one’s identity, and the important question was: “What does he drive?” Not only teenagers, but also millions of older persons literally defined themselves in terms of the number, cost, style, and horsepower of their vehicles. “Escape,” thinks a character in a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. “As long as he had his own car he was an American and could not die.”
