ABSTRACT
The motor car gave Americans individual freedom; a speedy geographical mobility unimagined in the age of the horse or even the train. One part of the motor car's intoxicating appeal was the American attraction to advanced technology. By the 1920s the automobile reached the apex of the industrial revolution. The curious combination of utility, poetry and power that Americans invested in the motor car and its many related industries is difficult to understand. Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company were crucial to the popularization of the automobile and American domination of the industry: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude," he said in 1907. The widespread diffusion of motor vehicles and the rapid construction of a national network of surfaced roads had tremendous implications for America society. This combination of roads and cars created what Flink has termed "mass personal" automobility."
