A CAR IS A CAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27040, 26 March 1949, Page 6

A CAR IS A CAR

There is* perhaps, no more telling symbol of the yearning for escape which exists in every one of us than the glorification of the automobile. No other such relatively mundane piece of machinery receives such lavish quantities of pride, envy or publicity, depending on the individual viewpoint. The car has become more than a beast of burden; it has become a soughtafter member of the family, to be tended with the same affectionate regard as a Bedouin has for his camel. Possibly the tantalising fact that the chromium-jawed products of the assembly line may be seen but not bought has accentuated the wistful enthusiasm with which the greater part of the population absorbs the panegyrics of the publicity writers. But surely there must be a band of die-hards who are prepared to sneer at all such boastful propaganda? Surely there are some who regard the secrecy surrounding the arrival of a new model car, and the pomp attendant on its unveiling, as just so much gilt without gingerbread? Surely there must be some who feel that the car of to-day is trying hard to regain its old role as a luxury rather than a necessity?

There was a time when a car was a machine designed to take somebody from one place to another with a maximum of efficiency and a l-easonable amount of comfort. It was, in its thriftiest form, merely a spirited steed on which the owner was free to attach such gadgets as he deemed necessary. But to-day the car manufacturers strive after superlatives. They design vehicles which compare more than favourably with the avirage domestic interior, suggesting that the time will come when the car will cease to be an appendage to the home and the harassed peoples of the world will live on wheels, deriving comfort against the anxieties of the atomic future from the fact that they are mobile targets, and in temporary luxury. In the meantime, the car-starved motorists of the world would very probably—in the unlikely event of their true interests and desires being heeded —be pleased to do with less glamour and fewer gadgets. They would like to see cars produced which performed the functions for which they were intended and nothing more. They would like to see cars produced in which one could nudge one’s neighbour-without a major repair task as a corollary to the incident. And they would like to see cars in which, if repairs were needed, all working parts were readily accessible. The late Gertrude Stein, herself an avowed admirer of the functional rather than the fabulous in car designs, might well have summed the matter up in a typical fact-accentuating phrase such as “A car is a car is a car.” It may not make sense, but it is the sort of repetition which might make the manufacturers think of a car as a car rather than as a chromium boudoir on wheels.