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Forged in Print: John Bond, Road & Track, and the Birth of Car Guy Culture · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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Perspectives on Motorsport Journalism 1952 1972 with presenters from
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McPherson College, Luke Chenelle, Ken Yan, and Christy Soja.
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Forged in print, John Bond, Road and Track, and the formation of
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the Car Guy culture by Luke Chanel.
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John Bond, who lived from 1912 to 1989, and his wife Elaine, bought the
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faltering magazine Road and Track in 1949.
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Over the course of his ownership and editorship, Bond built the
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magazine into a major cultural force.
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This presentation examines the dimensions that Bond engaged with his editorial
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viewpoint from a holistic cultural lens.
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Bond built a durable version of car culture, the practices and values
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of which remain in many forms today, although under challenge from old and
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new trends in the automotive industry.
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Bond's version of car enthusiasm stemmed directly from two sources, his education
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at the General Motors Institute and his enthusiasm for European racing.
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Rodentrack's coverage for the foreign motorsport scene for some time was
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the only widely available source of material for an American audience.
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This presentation argues that Bond's two decade editorship from 1951 to
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1972 of Road and Track created the foundational dimensions of traditional
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car guy culture with its familiar and clubby atmosphere to those in the know,
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but also acted in an exclusionary way to women, casual automobile and racing
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enthusiasts, and those who might have appreciated automobiles from other
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dimensions than their mechanical design or performance on certain tests.
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Finally, the presentation examines Bond's version of car culture in
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a contemporary light, considering the roles of the changing nature
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of racing and its relationship to road vehicles, the renaissance in
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electric vehicles, and debates about mobility in the contemporary climate.
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Luke Chenelle is an associate professor in the Department of
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Automotive Restoration at McPherson College, currently in his 18th year.
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His teaching emphasis is in mechanical engineering history,
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focusing on power transmission, steering and suspension, and brakes.
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His research interests involve early automotive engineering, the cultural
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history of car collecting, and American railroads in the steam era.
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His current collector cars include a 1923 Buick and a 1992 Ford Mustang.
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Very pleased to be at the Argot Singer Symposium.
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So I wanted to start off by talking about the genesis of this project, which
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for me came about almost 25 years ago.
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A friend of mine and I, growing up, had Mustangs, and driving around our
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neighborhood, one of the neighbors stopped us one day and said, I
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have a bunch of old car magazines.
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Would you like those?
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And it turned out he had a lot of old car magazines, and so I and my friend went up
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with a pickup truck that we borrowed and loaded up an entire pickup truck load of
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Motor Trend, Road and Track, all of these magazines from the 1950s to the 1970s.
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The gentleman we got them from had bought a Jaguar XK120 brand new in 1952.
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And basically started a subscription to every publication.
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So being an avid reader, I found myself reading these magazines for years and
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years and years and following through.
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And so I've wanted to do this project for a long time because I found those
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very influential in my own life.
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And as I reflect on it, I've think that these magazines, particularly
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the work of John Bond has been influential in our broader car
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culture and want to point that out.
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I title my presentation, Forged in Print, John Bond, Road and Track,
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and the Creation of Car Guy Culture, because, again, I believe that Bond
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built a durable version of car culture that still influences us today.
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And it's my thesis that that culture is now under questioning.
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Certainly, I think a number of the presentations today have questioned
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the gender roles, which my colleague, Christy Sojka, will speak to.
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But I also see other facets of that car culture under duress
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or review or under questioning.
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And so I think it's important, initially, to establish what that is.
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The dimensions of car culture are that John Bond forged in Road and Track and
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think about how our present automotive enthusiasm, racing enthusiasm, and
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car culture in general reflects that.
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Again, I want to go back to a personal story, and then I promise
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I'll stop talking about myself.
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So, at one point in my life, I found myself in Lincoln, Nebraska, through,
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shall I say, no particular fault of my own, and Lincoln was a great, uh, Lincoln
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was a great place, but I needed a job.
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And so I took a job at the local parts store and I went down to this
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guy's shop named road and track.
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And I had spotted it immediately.
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The shop was run by a guy named Bud Dunklao.
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And so the picture I have up there might be somewhat deceptive in
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that it might look like an early headquarters of road and track, but
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it in fact is Bud Dunklao's shop road and track that he founded in 1962.
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And so after making my first delivery, Some widget to bud.
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I clearly like jumped in and was really interested in his Porsche speedster.
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He was working on a three Oh eight Ferrari, and we
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had a very common language.
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Right.
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And so bud, who is in his seventies at the time asks me, how did a young
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guy get to know about all this stuff?
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And I said, It's the title on your building, Road and Track.
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And so that common language, that common in that we had was a durable way of
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intergenerational transfer, which again, my colleague Ken Yan will talk more
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about in the end of our presentation.
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First, I think it's important to establish who John Bond was and really
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what he thought of his world, how his formative influences shaped him.
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Bond was born in 1912.
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He attended GMI, which is now Kettering University, graduating in 1934 with
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a degree in mechanical engineering.
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After his graduation, before World War II, he worked variously for a
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lot of independent manufacturers.
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He worked for Studebaker, White Motor Truck, and also Harley Davidson.
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And I point that out to say that I believe that working at the
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independent manufacturers, that Bond gained a real appreciation for them.
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For the diversity of automotive engineering and also a tremendous
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appreciation for pre war American cars, which would lead to many of
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his editorial positions later in road and track in the early 1950s.
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It's unclear to me what role the war played in Bond's life.
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I believe he was a member of the service, though I have not
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been able to research that.
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What I can tell you, however, is that.
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Much is in the best years of our lives.
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He received a dear John letter during the war, came home to be newly divorced.
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At which point he met a spouse, Elaine, who also was divorced
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immediately after the war.
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And they set about building a life together.
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We're married in 1950.
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Interestingly enough, their honeymoon.
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Was driving Bond's brand new 1950 Ford to Watkins Glen for the road races.
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They drove from California and I can only say that Elaine must have been
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a saint to do that for her honeymoon.
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But Elaine played a key role in the magazine.
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She was the one who ultimately, I think, brought about the broader editorial
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vision and Bond was really just, not just, but he was the executor of Elaine's
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broader, grander vision for the magazine.
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One of the ways to approach people always is the cars they own.
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And so from an early 1952 issue of Road and Track, I have Bond's list
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of cars that he had owned prior to buying the magazine in 1953.
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His cars up until then included a 28 Ford, 29 Ford, 30 Ford, 35 Chevrolet,
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37 Buick 60, a 40 Chevrolet, a 39 Buick 40, 33 Terraplane 8, 46 Ford
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6, 32 Ford V8, 47 Ford V8, 49 Ford V8, and then finally, probably
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the most interesting, a 1949 MGTC.
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And so we see here the genesis of Bond become interested in
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sports cars through his MG.
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Given his pre war experience, he determined that The American
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manufacturers simply were not competing in this market, and his
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vision was that there should be the construction of an American sports car.
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And so Bond begins pushing pretty strongly in the magazine for the
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development and construction of a proper American sports car.
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To do that first, though, he needs to define what a sports car is.
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And I like to joke quite often that my students often define their
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pickup trucks as sports cars because they have five speed transmissions,
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two doors, and four wheels.
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And that clearly was not Bond's vision.
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So in a series of his early editorials, he laid out his vision
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for what a sports car really meant.
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And that vision really was the combination of road and track.
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It was the idea that a road machine could also be a purpose built racing
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machine and serve as a driver.
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Dual function vehicle for both road and track.
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And I want to talk more about racing specifically.
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And so I'll get to that when one of my future slides, but one of the other
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major dimensions of car culture that Bond brought to road and track and
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ultimately to, I think our broader one is the determination that to be
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a true car enthusiast, you needed to have a deep historical background,
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which certainly the people in this room and myself consider a very important.
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characteristic.
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But in particular, he used history as filler content.
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And I would use the December 1952 issue as particular evidence.
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When there were no racing events to cover, the issue was entirely automotive
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history and pre war automotive history.
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Bond regularly used historical examples to back up his logic and reasoning for
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how there once had been an American sports car industry and should be
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again, particularly manufacturers like Mercer, Duesenberg, and others.
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And so Bond could never quite figure out exactly where this fit in the
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magazine until really about 1955, 56, 57 when it was codified into a standing
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feature in the magazine, the Salon, in which classic cars, particularly
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classic European cars, were dissected not only from a mechanical standpoint,
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but from also a design standpoint.
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And so it's always been a great question of mine, why in America we have so
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many French concours style events.
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And I would point to John Bond salons in road and track and their
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enduring influence in creating an American appreciation for French
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cars in particular, in French design.
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The other piece that I would like to point out as a dimension of
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Bond's kind of automotive enthusiasm was that he loved weird cars.
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The more strange and kind of outlandish he could think of, the more he found interest
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in publishing those cars in the magazines.
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He was interested in oddities and variations.
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And I think kind of the pinnacle of this was when Robert Cumberford
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published a series of questions in 1957 suggesting a new ethos of design
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for automobiles, a simplistic design.
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design, and a gentleman named Stan Mott developed this car he called
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the Cyclops, which was the ultimate minimalist form of the automobile.
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So the Cyclops became a regular feature in the magazine, said to be the most
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raced and mythical car in the world.
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I would also point to this as an example of Bond creating his own world.
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He is a myth maker.
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He is someone who sees.
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Not only the opportunity to report on the world as it exists, but
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also the opportunity to influence and to build his own vision or the
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visions of others into reality.
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I want to particularly dive in, finally, to the role of racing and what role
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racing has in the development of cars.
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Bond and Lane were both avid attendees of various races.
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I have a photograph of them here on a DKW van, really oddball car, but attending
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and timing road race in the 1950s.
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Bond watched, I would say, very intently the developments of the American
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manufacturers and European manufacturers.
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His long running column, Miscellaneous Ramblings, was aptly titled, in that
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it was mainly a series of reports on engineering developments, not only in
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American cars, but also in European cars.
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I've referenced that photograph from Veloce today, which has a
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really excellent primary source interview with John Bond Jr.
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on the history of his father, and so I'll give you some reference material there.
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He lays out, really, in 1952, 1953, the idea of building a true American
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sports car, declares that American manufacturers simply have not done
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it and are not going to do it.
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He views the introduction of the Corvette with quite a bit of skepticism.
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He writes, rumors of a new sports car from a large established manufacturer
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in this country seem authentic.
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Is it too much 50 50 curb weight distribution, fore and aft, brakes
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that won't fade, a straightforward manual four speed transmission, and
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steering that requires no more than three turns of the wheel, lock to lock?
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The Corvette, at least in 1953, had none of those things.
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So Bond was again very skeptical of that.
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So he takes his own path and then builds a series of articles on American sports
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car design and does essentially a rehash of American engines, chassis, all sorts
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of combinations that he thought would make the proper American sports car.
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So throughout the 1950s you see These broad features on independent
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backyard manufacturers attempting to build the great American sports car
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bond pushes and pushes and pushes and competition is his real watchword.
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It's his belief that competition is the one arbiter of performance and
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that if a car is not competitive on the track, that means it's a failure.
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And so I would jump forward to 1964 when Ford announces their
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total performance campaign.
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And so here's what Bond writes in road and track.
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He says, April 1964, 10, 12 years ago, road and track was a
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lonely voice crying out that U.
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S.
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manufacturers should support motor racing in some form or another.
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Now, in the shape of FOMOCO, we have it.
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And not just in token form.
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In summary, the Lola Ford GT, and we say it's about time someone in the U.
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S.
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decided to take racing seriously.
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Ferrari has done a marvelous job of building up a well deserved performance
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image, but they can be beaten.
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And it's about time someone did.
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Not even in the days of Mercer, Stutz, Duesenberg, et cetera, have
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we seen such a concerted effort towards all out racing from one
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manufacturer in all facets of the sport.
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Meanwhile, the rest of the industry sleeps on.
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So, Bond maintained a very critical voice toward the American car
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industry, again, because he found them lacking in performance.
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I would emphasize here that Bond's role and vision of The role of racing in the
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development of road cars is paramount, and certainly think that emphasis on
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performance is something that is a durable and again, transient version
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of car culture in our present world.
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Bond, after Ford wins Le Mans, which he considers the pinnacle of racing,
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after Ford wins Le Mans in 1966, Bond really, in some sense, loses his
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direction for the magazine because he's, in some sense, achieved his goal.
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So while he's still interested in pursuing engineering notes and
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miscellaneous ramblings, there's a real transition period when the magazine
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starts to grow and Bond effectively cashes in to the point where he sells
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the magazine to CBS in 1972, more or less goes back to California, builds
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his own garage, a stable of roughly 15 cars, and essentially is retired
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until his death in the early 1990s.
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However, I would like to point out that Bond did build, in fact, a durable
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movement, and particularly a number of followers of his movement to the point
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that when safety regulations became a major contention in the early 1970s, it
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was the readers of Road and Track that mobilized to write letters to NHTSA, the
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EPA, and others to try to push off, stave off, safety regulations, which they viewed
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as interfering with The ultimate goal of performance and design of their cars.
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So from 1972, I have this.
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Remember that proposal of the NHTSA to limit the top speed of new cars to
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95 miles an hour and require flashing lights and a honking horn at anything
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over 80 and our editors, March, 1971, calling readers to action in opposing it.
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Our readers and other motoring enthusiasts responded.
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NHTSA held its docket on the proposal until long after the original closing
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date because of the flood of mail it got.
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And when the docket was finally closed, they had 24, 300 responses.
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Eight times as many as they'd ever seen on a proposal.
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And so, Bond creates an army of movement enthusiasts who want to
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build and grow the vision that Bond saw in the pages of Road and Track.
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So, it's not just about Bond as a poll influence on the media, right,
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where he reports on what he sees.
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He's also able to create a push factor.
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And so, at this point, I would like to turn over to my colleague,
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Christy Sojka, who will discuss the role of gender and the creation
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of car guy culture in particular through the pages of Road and Track.
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Thank you.
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Woman's Place in Car Culture.
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John Bond, Road and Track, and the Evolution of Gender
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Representation by Christy Soja.
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This presentation will explore the progression of gender representation
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within the time that John Bond owned and edited Road and Track magazine.
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It will examine all aspects of the publication between
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the years 1951 and 1972.
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Including cover art, article content, photographs, and advertising.
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The presentation will compare and contrast the first 10 years of
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Bond's editorship with the last 10 years to identify any potential
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changes in female representation.
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With a historical perspective of developing gender politics of the time
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period, the presentation will consider whether these societal shifts had
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any impact on women's representation within the pages of the publication.
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Christy Soja earned her BA in history from Wichita State University.
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With an emphasis on women's history and her MLIS from Kent State University,
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she has worked in a variety of roles in Kansas libraries for the past 14 years.
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Christy is currently entering her fourth year as the Director of Library Services
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at Miller Library at McPherson College.
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Her responsibilities include providing library and research
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services, support, and instruction to the entire campus community.
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She also oversees two special collections located within the Miller Library, the
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Brethren and College Archives, and the Paul Russell and Company Center for
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Automotive Research, which houses the Special Automotive Materials Collection.
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Her favorite aspect of working in academic libraries is the
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connections she makes with students.
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She also enjoys the relationships she has built since coming to
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Macpherson College with automotive enthusiasts from across the country.
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I am thrilled to be back here for my second year at the symposium and so
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grateful to Luke and Ken for valuing my perspective that I bring to this topic.
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Unlike Luke, I have not been familiar with Road and Track for 25 years.
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As a librarian, my familiarity with Road and Track was pretty much
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based on they come in, I catalog them, and they go on the shelf.
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And so I had to spend the last several months really immersing myself
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in this 20 years of the magazine.
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And that involved just sitting down and going cover to cover.
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And I I read many pages of content.
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I looked at lots of advertising and you're going to see that.
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And I will say that I really had to just do that deep dive and really look at what
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was happening while also thinking about what was happening in society at the time.
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Luke gave us a great history of John and Elaine Bond.
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One of the things that kept coming to my mind As I looked through these years
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that they were owners of Road and Track, was a piece of advice that I received
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from my mother in law as I was about to marry my husband, and she said take
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interest in each other's interests.
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And I feel that John and Elaine were really partners in this enterprise
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and I was very optimistic about what that might mean for this publication
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and what it would mean as far as women being represented in these pages.
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I have looked through the magazine, as I said, cover to cover, and so I
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thought I would start with cover art.
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And we have these two examples where we do have some ladies who were
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represented on these two different covers.
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Very interesting.
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Both of these are from 1953, just a few months apart.
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And the one on the left, this is a model.
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And we do get her name in the cover information.
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The cover on the right, these are two young ladies.
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It really says in the cover information, these two young ladies work in
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the office of the Healy Company.
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And we don't get their names.
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I thought that was a little telling.
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The other interesting thing about the cover art, these are the only two
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in the 20 year run that I looked at that actually had women on the cover.
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So, I appreciate that they're not draped over the hood.
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I do appreciate that, but I will say, Along with that, men are not
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really featured on the cover of Road and Track during this time either.
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It's really about the car, something that sort of became a theme for me.
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So, article content.
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This caught my attention early as I was looking in the early 50s issues.
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There was a series of four letters to the editor and these
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were titled, A Yank Abroad.
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This was an American gentleman who was traveling around Europe
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by car, attending European races.
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In that first letter, he makes a reference to we at some point.
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We did this, and I thought, well, who is the other person in the we?
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When we get to the second letter, we find out that the other person is his wife.
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He actually references her there, but she doesn't have a name yet.
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We don't get to learn her name.
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He's writing in that second letter about his navigator sent him off in the
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wrong direction and, and then we find out that his navigator is his wife.
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When we get to the third letter, we get this lovely editor's note at the
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top explaining what this series of letters is about, and they tell us Mr.
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Harrison, who with his wife, is traveling around Europe.
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So again, we know it's his wife, but she doesn't have a name.
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Finally, in the fourth letter, we get to part four where it
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says Burton and Helen Harrison.
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She finally has a name, and it's wonderful, and so I thought this was
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a really interesting progression.
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And then, as I studied more article content, I came across
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this really interesting little blurb titled Madame Unique.
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This woman in the picture on the left is a Czechoslovakian woman who
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was a race car driver in 1927 to 28.
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She actually quit racing after her husband, her first husband,
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died in a racing accident.
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And so that prompted her to stop racing, but they It caught up with her where
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she had the opportunity to take a spin in a race car again, and she was
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expressing how much she enjoyed that.
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So I did appreciate this nod to her.
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This next article was a gentleman who was pondering the possibility of sending
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a postcard to other annoying drivers out there on the road, sort of like
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a very polite version of road rage.
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And we see at the top, Dear Madam, so this This postcard goes out to a woman
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that he encountered on the road, and he says, What irritated me was not the stench
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of potion coming out of your exhaust.
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And so, obviously, we're likening her to a witch at this point.
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With driving tactics like these, how have you managed to grow so
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old and ugly in the first place?
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And then we hear, For your own safety and mine, let me suggest that you trade
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in your broomstick on a wheelchair, but be sure and let somebody else push it.
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Interestingly enough, that was about mid 60s when I found that article.
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Early 70s!
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I start seeing a regular column by a female writer by
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the name of Elizabeth Hayward.
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And so I thought, okay, finally, we're getting some great
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positive female representation.
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And that continued.
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I had this, you know, this optimism that built up.
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When I got to this story about the Sun Valley Portia Parade, I believe
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this was a 19th century 70, maybe 71, but they gathered in Sun Valley.
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There was a concour where men and women could all enter their cars,
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and they were judged equally and not divided into two classes.
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However, there were two races that took place, and when it came time for
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the races, there were two different classes, one for men and one for women.
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But the really exciting thing for me was that we have these female
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boosters listed the first, second, and third place winners of each race.
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And we have their names.
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By 1970, we're getting to the point where women have names.
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And I love that.
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So we're going to switch gears and we're going to talk about
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advertising a little bit.
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Actually a lot.
24:01
This is where you really get a real sense of female representation.
24:06
So on the left, these first couple of ads, these are actresses that they
24:11
posed next to these car companies.
24:13
And so we just have sort of this elegant movie star aesthetic.
24:18
Over on the right, we have ads for a women's.
24:21
product.
24:21
So we've got some head scarves here.
24:24
So if you'd like to purchase those for your significant other who
24:28
might be writing with a top down next to you, you have that option.
24:32
In the 1960s, I start seeing these lovely ads by a company called M.
24:39
G.
24:39
Mitten.
24:40
They are two page spreads.
24:43
And at the top of the first page, there is this little note
24:49
called Marion's Meanderings.
24:50
And every month, it's a different note to potential customers.
24:56
I was just intrigued by these little notes from Marion, and so I
25:01
wanted to know more about Marion.
25:03
And so I went out and did a little side research and found out that Marion
25:06
Weber was the owner of MG Mitten.
25:10
This was a company that she founded.
25:13
Her husband had an MG and she sewed a cover for that MG.
25:18
When he would go to his meetings of the MG club, all of his friends and club members
25:23
were like, we need one of those too.
25:26
And so, This light bulb went off for Marion and she started
25:30
sewing more of these car covers.
25:32
It evolved to the point where there were other items for sale, gloves, scarves,
25:38
jackets, all sorts of driving apparel.
25:42
And then the M.
25:43
G.
25:43
Mitten, obviously, a literative term for that M.
25:46
G.
25:47
car cover.
25:47
And then so she took that and said, well, how about a Porsche Parka?
25:52
or a Ferrari frock.
25:55
I just really enjoyed doing that little bit of side research about Marian Webber.
25:59
In the late 60s, she moves away from this Marian's meanderings and she
26:06
hires Dave Deal, who is a cartoonist, and every month he has a different
26:12
cartoon to go along with her little note instead of that picture of her.
26:17
So, a really, really interesting lady.
26:20
So this is an evolution of carpet ads for your car.
26:25
This is the same company, and we go from left to right here.
26:29
We're on the left hand side, early 60s, and then that middle ad is from about the
26:35
mid 60s, and then we get to the late 60s.
26:38
You'll notice that the clothing has left as we have progressed forward, and
26:45
I'm not sure about any of you, but I don't know anyone, male or female, who
26:50
hangs out like this on their car carpet.
26:53
No pun intended there.
26:55
I will also point out, because I think it's so fascinating, because as a
27:00
librarian, I'm focusing on this new world of artificial intelligence and AI images.
27:06
If you look at that last picture over there, on the right hand
27:10
side of the screen, you'll notice something about this woman.
27:13
She has three legs.
27:16
You might not have noticed that before.
27:18
So then we continue.
27:20
Goodyear has a variety of ads.
27:23
They were really prolific within these pages and a lot of them featured women.
27:29
I really liked this one.
27:30
I sort of was thinking about boots and that we hear boot as kind
27:35
of a nickname for tires, right?
27:37
And so I thought that was interesting and I had, you know, that Nancy
27:41
Sinatra song running through my head as I look at this ad.
27:44
In the middle, we have this midget ad and I think of this.
27:48
as The Beach Barbie and Ken.
27:51
If you get this midget, you can have this golden lifestyle.
27:55
You can go to the beach and be tan.
27:58
And we have this midship ad where we do get a woman draped on the hood of a car.
28:03
Continuing with advertising in the 60s, I loved this ad for WD 40.
28:09
The color just sort of appealed to me.
28:11
But I also thought This could also be a great ad for hairspray.
28:16
In the middle, this is an ad for a solicitation to join a group
28:22
against government regulations on sports cars and racing.
28:27
And we can see Lady Liberty portrayed in a not very attractive light here.
28:34
And VW parts ad.
28:37
Again, I don't know anyone who's standing around with their parts like this.
28:42
But, you know.
28:43
So these two ads I thought was interesting for myself personally.
28:48
These were the two that sort of raised my feminist hackles the most.
28:52
The one on the left is a Honda ad titled, Men's Liberation.
28:57
This was in the 70s.
28:59
So we have this, you know, resurgence.
29:02
of the women's liberation movement.
29:04
We have the equal rights amendment.
29:06
All of this is building up once again.
29:09
And I just, I get it.
29:11
I read through the content of the ad.
29:13
I understand what they're saying.
29:15
You know, it's stressful getting away on your Honda is awesome, but I don't know.
29:20
I thought it was interesting, that play on the women's liberation movement.
29:24
And then the BMW ad, take me to your husband.
29:28
This one really hit me personally because I'm the one who drives
29:33
the BMW and not my husband.
29:36
But I did take a step back, remind myself.
29:39
This was 71 or 72.
29:43
Women in the United States, at this point, still cannot buy a
29:48
car without her husband cosigning for her, like getting a car loan.
29:52
So, you know, maybe in that sense, it sort of makes sense that you
29:55
would take this car to your husband.
29:58
It does say at the end, if you read through the content, at
30:01
least it's not another woman.
30:04
Okay, so now let's shift over to some photographs from some
30:07
of the contents of the articles.
30:09
This first one on the left, I really tried to find photographs
30:12
of women attending races.
30:14
It was challenging because, as you know, the crowd is often really
30:18
blurred in those types of photographs.
30:21
But I did find this one where I have a couple of women who are at the race.
30:25
And then these next two are really interesting.
30:28
These two ladies are in the pits.
30:30
They're in Daytona.
30:31
And obviously, relevant enough to have two pictures of them in this story.
30:37
But again, they have no name.
30:39
Neither of them has a name.
30:41
And we don't really know what they're doing.
30:43
In the middle picture, the woman on the right hand side, I
30:46
believe she's got a clipboard.
30:47
And stopwatches and things like that.
30:50
So I'm wondering if they're the significant other of one of the
30:53
race car drivers, but I'm not sure because there's nothing about them
30:57
within the article or the captions.
30:59
Auto shows.
31:01
Here we are, we've got the models.
31:03
This is where the women are really leaning against the side, draped over.
31:08
This was the 1970 Paris auto show.
31:11
I don't know how well you can tell, but she does not have anything on.
31:15
Those guys are not looking at the car.
31:18
And I've got a few cartoons that I came across where we've got some women.
31:24
This first one says, the brakes were fading badly in the eighth lab.
31:29
And then in the ninth, I broke a bra strap.
31:32
And then in the middle, we have this gentleman, I assume an engineer, and
31:36
he's drawing out these curves on this chart while thinking of other curves.
31:42
On the right hand side, we have some wishful thinking happening here
31:45
with this gentleman, maybe not very enthused about getting in the car, you
31:50
know, with, I assume, his wife, and really thinking about this young lady
31:53
who's over buying this sports car.
31:56
As I said, I was really optimistic because of Elaine's involvement with
32:00
the magazine that I would see more female representation within these
32:06
pages, and I'm sort of let down.
32:10
I feel a little disappointed.
32:12
On the other hand, I think that John Bond's focus was really on the car.
32:19
There are the sections on the races.
32:21
They do talk to the male drivers, but we heard some great things from
32:26
both Lynn and Chris about female race car drivers that were racing during
32:31
this time, and I didn't find any.
32:33
Anything about them in these pages.
32:35
So there's just that sense of disappointment for me, but I
32:39
thought I'd leave with this page.
32:41
This is a dedication in the book, 50 years of road and track, and it says dedicated
32:46
to John and Elaine, to whom we owe it all.
32:49
Now, I will transition to my colleague, Ken Yong, and he'll wrap this up.
33:01
An Anthropological Perspective, John Bond, Road and Track, and the Formalization and
33:06
Transmission of Car Culture, by Ken Yong.
33:08
This presentation will explore car culture from an anthropological
33:12
perspective as a complex whole combining both behavior and the material
33:15
objects integral to the behavior.
33:18
This formation of culture includes material, artifacts, rituals, customs,
33:21
language, beliefs, institutions, and techniques, among other elements.
33:25
This presentation will address two main questions, as presented in Road and Track.
33:29
What are the essential elements, behavior, and artifacts of car culture?
33:33
Second, can we learn anything or draw non obvious conclusions about
33:37
car culture by adopting this type of anthropological perspective?
33:40
Ken Yan is a professor of history and politics and department
33:43
chair at McPherson College.
33:45
In his 26th year at McPherson, Dr.
33:47
Yan's teaching responsibilities include courses on social and cultural history
33:51
of the automobile, technology and social change, and international travel study
33:55
courses focusing on European automobiles.
33:58
His doctoral work in political science was followed by post
34:00
doctoral work in history, economics, and intercultural communications.
34:04
His personal interests include the restoration of vintage European racing
34:08
bicycles and long distance cycle touring.
34:10
Very good, thank you so much.
34:12
A continuation of road and track and car culture, and this time I'm looking through
34:16
a lens, and it's a photographer's lens, and look at the intergenerational nature
34:20
of car culture, which we're all profoundly interested in, exactly where is this
34:23
headed, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.
34:25
40, 50, 100 years from now.
34:27
But first I want to zoom out before I zoom in, and I want to talk about the
34:31
way this kind of project evolved from last year's meeting here, tied with
34:37
other experiences that the three of us have had in academic experiences,
34:41
and one of them was the recurring nature of the concept of car culture.
34:45
It's appearing again, and again, and again.
34:46
And three quarters of the presentations have made reference to culture.
34:50
And so one of the things we thought, well, is there anything we can do
34:52
to contribute to that discussion?
34:54
Luke and I, about 15 years ago, began teaching a series of courses at the
34:58
University of Science and Technology in France and Leipzig University on
35:03
the cultural structure of technology.
35:05
And so we thought maybe we could take some of those ideas
35:08
and roll them over into this.
35:10
And so here's kind of what we have is one thing we can notice is that there's
35:13
a whole raft of different ways that car culture is used in different contexts.
35:18
One thing you might say within a country that there's a car culture subset of the
35:22
natural population is relationship with the cars is a key part of their identity.
35:26
And we break that out into all different kinds of flavors of that in different
35:29
venues and different fans where we have dirt track or F1 or rat rod.
35:35
Thinking of Katherine Wirth in Australia talking about an upper class
35:38
racers as well as gentleman racers with Jim Miller about Mark Howell's
35:41
NASCAR nature and so we were using these terms pretty regularly here.
35:45
One of the first things that really enamored me with this conference
35:48
was the kind of loving reminiscence I heard from some of you.
35:51
speakers about their experiences at Watkins Glen, and particularly that
35:54
even this venue had a specific culture, if you will, whatever that might mean.
35:59
We talk about national car cultures, U.
36:02
S., Germany, Italy.
36:03
It's a critical influence in national life.
36:05
And then there's, you know, a question that emerges again,
36:07
is the German car fundamentally different from the Italian car?
36:10
Is that fundamentally different from the Japanese car?
36:12
And what is the reason for that?
36:13
Is there some underlying spirit that's behind it?
36:17
We have a range of practices.
36:18
We refer to fast foods, drive ins, movies, cruisings, clothing, film,
36:22
music are all elements of car culture.
36:25
And then we have this global way of life that we embrace as the pinnacle
36:29
tool of mobility and power and economic engines within our society.
36:33
And then finally, the kickback.
36:35
And we often think of the kickback and the opposition to car culture
36:38
as maybe outside of car culture, but it's actually a fundamental part.
36:42
You know, the questions and challenges about The deaths on our motorways or
36:47
what's happening to urban congestion and design and disenfranchisement of
36:51
property for minority groups from where the highways were chosen to be built and
36:55
the critique of the cars are fundamental.
36:56
So we, for a breakdown, it's actually opening it up rather than closing it down.
37:01
And I want to clarify that a lot of times what we do when we define
37:05
cultures, we build the definition of anything, is we're attempting to
37:08
create the space and say here's where our discussion is going to be bounded.
37:12
And actually, this definition that we're kind of building and discussing
37:16
today is one that does the opposite.
37:17
In fact, it's an attempt to unbound it.
37:20
To say that there's no definitive authority that gets to say where culture
37:23
is drawn and where it's not drawn.
37:25
And part of this was, you know, an inspiration.
37:27
I was listening to Don.
37:28
It was every time when he wraps things up, he talks about future research agendas
37:32
and trying to put the pieces together to understand how our different efforts
37:36
combined to a broader understanding of this thing that we, we all love.
37:40
And, and one of the things I did in my project was catalog the
37:42
use of children in photography.
37:44
Watkins Glen is the only racing venue in the United States that road and track
37:48
ever showed pictures of children at.
37:50
You all noticed that Watkins Glen was treated differently.
37:53
So this venue has a special car culture, but how do we
37:56
capture that within definition?
37:58
So I started by digging with the most general definition and obsolete definition
38:02
I could have so that we were going to kind of undefine what culture means.
38:06
Not define it, but undefine it.
38:08
Something we can talk about is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
38:12
art, law, morals, customs, capabilities acquired by man as a member of society.
38:16
And of course, I chose this specifically because this is One of the things
38:19
that's under fire, that we know that that doesn't work anymore.
38:22
But there's other things we really love about this, and that's
38:25
we're talking about capabilities.
38:26
Because when we're talking about capabilities, we're talking about agency.
38:30
We're talking about car culture is something that's actually created.
38:34
It's not just a static domain that you live in.
38:36
And if you look at, All of the presentations, one of the fundamental
38:39
logical levers we're all using is change.
38:42
It's a change in events.
38:43
What prompted a new way of designing an Alfa Romeo?
38:47
What prompted another way of expressing national identity?
38:51
What prompted another reason for creating a car series for women drivers?
38:55
And so that's our delta, if you will, like we're constructing experiments.
38:59
They're experiments that nature creates for us to test our ideas.
39:03
And so this idea of capabilities and the acquisition It also becomes
39:06
an important part of the way we approach it because one of our central
39:10
questions is how is it acquired?
39:12
And that's why we turned to John Bond, because he's an agent of transmission
39:15
of culture and why we're looking at media as a way to understand it.
39:19
And then it happens within an exogenous, we have an endogenous sense of agency
39:24
from capability and then you have an exogenous structure of society.
39:28
The things that change around us in development, whether
39:30
it's environment or technology.
39:32
And then it gives us a research agenda.
39:34
You know, we're talking about the language.
39:36
We're talking about the automobile as an object of art.
39:38
We're talking about the set of tools the vehicles themselves.
39:41
We're talking about the codes, the laws, both formal and
39:44
informal, the institutions.
39:45
One of the things I sometimes ask my students to do is pick any
39:48
event in their lives and tell me the automobile story, you know.
39:51
In a wedding, what is the automobile rituals of a wedding?
39:54
Tying the cans.
39:55
Photo of the best man holding the keys out.
39:58
Say, you got to get out of here.
39:59
Here's the keys.
40:00
You know, and we have all these things that you get a special car.
40:03
But at any rate, it permeates all the things we do.
40:05
And so then you have, again, to reopen it up and say it goes on and on and on.
40:11
So these were kind of a kicking off point for how we wanted to do it.
40:14
And I especially like this idea of the complexity of it.
40:17
And so then, now I want to take another level and say that this acquisition,
40:22
When we were starting to teach the technological structure of culture, we
40:26
realized that it became an endless pit.
40:29
And much of the things that we talk about in culture, we can point
40:34
to these things really easily.
40:35
You know, the food, the dress, the music, the visual arts.
40:38
The thing about culture, the reason it's a touchstone for all of us as
40:42
a discussion, is because we know it's actually very intimate, and it
40:45
really shapes deeply the way we think.
40:46
And so interculturalists, they're not anthropologists, they're not
40:51
sociologists, but they're a branch of social science that really begins
40:55
this wide open definition of culture based on the identities that you
40:58
choose, which is actually more in line with the way we think about culture.
41:02
We think about, you claim your culture, I don't sign it to you.
41:06
It represents courtesy, you know, like the courtesy of who opens a car door for whom.
41:10
Our behaviors, nonverbal communication, how close do you stand, where do
41:15
you stand near each other, and how do you, the notions of modesty.
41:19
And it gets deeper and deeper about understandings of physical pain, what
41:23
we consider to be kinship and family.
41:25
And so all of these really deep structures of how we interact with the world are
41:30
actually embedded in car culture, but it's really difficult to see from the inside.
41:35
And you never think of it as something that needs to be
41:37
explained, it's just how you are.
41:39
And so this intercultural perspective of when you have different cultural
41:43
dispositions encountering each other and exploring that encounter,
41:46
it makes a really good theoretical lever for building understanding.
41:50
This is a sample of one of these models that's used by interculturalists.
41:54
I didn't want to teach you the model, but this is a sample.
41:56
For example, Geerd Hofstede has the dimensions of national cultural
42:00
life, and he'll say, for example, there's a power distance of the
42:03
hierarchical spaces we have.
42:04
I taught in Japan for three years, and I can tell you when I walked into
42:08
a Japanese classroom, it was like, you know, the admiral walking onto
42:10
the bridge of an aircraft carrier.
42:12
And it was dramatically different.
42:14
That power distance, which varies, this idea of uncertainty and
42:17
avoidance, what kind of risk you take, this is an automotive class.
42:21
This is at the heart of automotive racing.
42:23
What does it mean to take those risks?
42:24
And why do we admire the people that do and understand the technicals?
42:27
This idea of individual versus collectivism, which we've been
42:30
talking about again and again, is part of self autonomy and self
42:33
reliance and how it emerges in different parts of American culture.
42:37
Masculinity and femininity is the core of this.
42:39
Different cultures do it in different ways, express it in different ways.
42:42
Long term outlook.
42:43
Are you looking for 20 years, or 30 years, or 40 years down the line?
42:45
Are you solving it?
42:46
But anyway, this is one of the ways you can do it.
42:48
And so you can readily see how you might take a framework like this, and
42:52
were you to go down this path, you would find that there are actually
42:55
mechanisms for measuring these things.
42:58
And you can rate and compare.
42:59
If you ever Google Geert Hofstede, you can look up how these things work in
43:02
Japan versus how they work in Germany versus how they work in England.
43:06
And there's a really great paper to be written there to compare drivers using
43:09
these kind of analytic frameworks.
43:11
But when I burrow down to get to my topic, What I wanted to add was
43:15
this intergenerational dimension.
43:17
I wanted to get to this idea of how we acquire and how we distribute car culture.
43:22
Because everybody wants to know what's going to happen and we have these
43:26
different ideas of how diffusion, that this approach to culture is
43:30
really useful because it talks about how it changes and how you
43:32
maintain it and how you preserve it.
43:35
Expansion diffusion is just the idea that it's always moving from one
43:39
place to another from a strong liberal source, you know, like social class.
43:43
Within social classes, they develop standards for inter ownership
43:46
patterns and racing patterns.
43:48
Gender is diffused expansively.
43:51
Contagious means from person to person within social equals.
43:54
So for example, if you have an audience at a race and you're all
43:57
bumping shoulders and you're cheering and you're chatting and here.
44:02
This is a diffusion among social equals, where you gather to
44:06
spread ideas with each other.
44:08
It also happens through government and authoritative sources.
44:11
And this is not as significant a role.
44:13
But I want to get down to this one, this idea of relocation.
44:16
So, like, Blackton Glen is such a great case study for this.
44:19
because it represents both this expansion among fans, but it also recognizes that
44:24
it's a relocation of this traveling nexus of racers and vehicles who go from place
44:29
to place to place, and it spreads out.
44:31
So if you look at car culture in Watkins Glen and the surrounding area, you have
44:35
like a pebble being dropped into a pond in a series of ripples that travels
44:39
across societies and across space.
44:42
And then finally, this question of intergenerational, how does it move
44:45
from one culture, and I was thinking specifically, Chris, when I was hearing
44:48
you talk about the F1 Academy, I was thinking, you know, this is someone who
44:52
is intentionally trying to diffuse it across generations, and when Luke was
44:55
talking about him as a kid picking this up, John Bond, really not interested
45:00
in transferring across generations.
45:02
That's not his goal.
45:04
And so it's just something that doesn't appear.
45:06
We're going to talk about Signal, the messages people use to transfer questions.
45:11
And so, this thing, we chose road and track images, and it became
45:16
apparent to all of us as we began doing this research, that we found
45:19
two road and track magazines.
45:21
We found one road and track magazine, It was generated by the publisher images and
45:25
we found a second Road and Track magazine that was generated by the advertisers.
45:29
And at first we thought, well, you know, this is a disconnect and
45:32
maybe the advertising, but maybe the advertisers actually understood Road
45:35
and Track more than the publishers did.
45:37
Because you publish it, you have your scarce resources, you're applying them
45:41
to the magazine, but the advertisers who have a lot of money on the line are trying
45:45
to assess exactly what is the real market here, where is this really going to, and
45:49
so it's two different interpretations.
45:51
And so if we look at these images.
45:53
It becomes broken down into a couple categories.
45:56
We have non intergenerational content, which is the vast majority.
46:00
And it's super technical.
46:02
The sports car design number nine, frame analysis in one easy lesson.
46:07
That is not one easy lesson.
46:10
It's all math, and it's all fabricating jigs, and it's all complex measurements.
46:15
And there was a really great one I liked on the, you know, the
46:17
elements of turbochargers, and principles of supercharging for
46:21
beginners, and things like that.
46:23
But then it's also these road tester, a fundamental staple.
46:26
The American car with the European look, getting back to his theme.
46:29
This is the Ferrari 365 GTB4, which sits right out of his office.
46:34
We have one of these at McPherson.
46:36
It's really cool, you can come sit in it if you want.
46:38
But my favorite road test of Road and Track was in 1970, April, where they did
46:43
the Sopwith Canal, complete with Snoopy.
46:45
And this is another attribute that neither Christy nor Luke
46:49
talk about much, but the vision of this was to be like a New Yorker.
46:52
This was going to be sophisticated, it was going to be humorous, it was going
46:55
to be clever, it was going to be edgy.
46:57
But nonetheless, there's no children.
46:59
Supercharging, fundamentals, technical diagrams.
47:02
There's also intergenerational content that's generated by road and track.
47:06
For example, cross country in a Morris Minor in September of 1953.
47:10
So we have an intergenerational image.
47:13
Here we have an article of road testing the Jeep.
47:15
And there were three images that included children watching out of the window.
47:20
Letters to the Editor.
47:21
Actually, there was a surprising amount of the child images were
47:24
in the Letters to the Editor.
47:25
They weren't actually in what the publisher wrote.
47:27
They were in the letters.
47:28
People writing, well, when I was a child, and they were trying to connect
47:32
their intergenerational experience to Rodin tracks, so the readers
47:36
were providing it, in some sense.
47:38
And then, here's women's live in the automobile, Brockbank, and that's
47:42
about it, there's not many images.
47:44
I'll give you some more quantitative analysis in just a minute.
47:47
Watkins Glen, as I mentioned, also has some images of family.
47:51
Now, advertisers intergenerational images.
47:55
The Morris Minor, here we have a family.
47:58
With the Morris Minor, and oddly enough, it was European
48:00
cars that were advertising.
48:02
And Road and Track were the ones that were actually providing
48:04
intergenerational images, which is kind of interesting because that
48:07
was not the car that John Bond was defining the magazine as his target.
48:12
He was not talking about family cars, but it was the family cars that advertised.
48:16
The world's greatest performer, the Citroën.
48:19
And this is funny because this is not my idealized French family, but
48:23
nonetheless, there's a Citroën ad.
48:24
Opal GT by This Is GM, but you can see a child looking longingly.
48:29
And then we have another Vega ad with a small child in the
48:33
corner, but there's not much.
48:34
This was the single largest source of any children images, was this
48:38
one ad, which appeared three times, and kind of screws up my data.
48:41
We looked at a lot of road and track.
48:43
I read like 8, 000 pages of road and track, I figured out later, and we
48:47
all went that, and then maybe a little bit more, trying to pour through these
48:50
and find these trends and patterns, and I never feel like I'm doing my job
48:54
as an academic if I don't get to draw at least one graph with lines on it.
48:58
So, there's the first whack at it, and then this is by year.
49:01
So 53 to 54, and it's normalized to be per 1, 000 pages.
49:06
So per 1, 000 pages, an average of 5 times per 1, 000 pages is their
49:12
reference to the next generation.
49:14
And within the content provided by Don Bond, there's an average of 3
49:18
images from the publisher per 1, 000.
49:21
There's no intergenerational transfer intended.
49:24
It's not a criticism, it's an awareness.
49:27
That's his target, his and her target, because they're partners in a way.
49:31
It's a kind of conclusion of some of the things that we like about how we
49:34
approach this and why we like embracing this kind of intercultural framework.
49:38
One, it's really agency centric.
49:41
It really focuses on the specific decisions that leaders or members
49:46
of an organization or society make, the decisions they make.
49:49
At the same time, It's balanced with a really complex exogenous.
49:54
So whatever changes that happen in the world, you begin to ask,
49:57
okay, who responded to it, and how did they respond to it?
50:00
Was it the community of Watkins Glen that was responding to these
50:04
changes in the dynamics of how Watkins Glen racing was working?
50:08
So this question of who is making what decisions and how they're acting on them
50:12
in a world where We are dealing with changes in technology, and economy, and
50:17
politics, and environment, and ideology.
50:20
And all these provide the exogenous context for agency.
50:24
It's a dynamic model where you have change emerging from definitions of individuals.
50:29
And then the breadth and complexity of the kinds of questions you can ask if
50:32
you're identifying a research agenda brings in, like, the whole circus
50:36
tent, the whole shebang of the study of the development of a single vehicle.
50:41
versus the question of someone's identity compared to the economic forces that shape
50:46
the sociological forces that make NASCAR Nation different from Gentleman Racers.
50:51
And all these kinds of questions that we want to ask really make
50:53
sense for us to approach with this kind of methodological perspective.
50:58
Christy and Luke and I would like to be available for a couple
51:01
minutes if you have any questions.
51:04
I think Road and Track came before Car and Driver, but I know when I
51:06
was growing up, those were the two magazines that I had to get every month.
51:10
Christy, I swear to you, if I ever bought a Playboy, I just
51:12
bought it to read the articles.
51:15
Honestly.
51:16
Anyway, do we have questions?
51:17
Actually, that would be a remarkable magazine to study as a comparison.
51:22
Playboy compared to what was happening in Road and Track would
51:24
be an extraordinary Next year?
51:27
No.
51:28
Can I help do the research on that?
51:36
This is a good framework that could be applied to a number of the periodicals
51:41
that have shaped car culture.
51:44
That we talk about and talk around.
51:48
And this is a very interesting way to do that.
51:51
And I like the framework that you've established.
51:54
Looking at the publisher.
51:55
You could go to Sports Car Illustrated, which became Car and Driver.
51:59
And you could start looking at those relationships.
52:01
And you could go to other, focused on racing.
52:03
Paul Achtman, for instance.
52:05
And On Track, and all those things.
52:07
That's a very good framework.
52:09
I really appreciate that.
52:10
This, this really opens, I think, some doors that you pointed out, Ken.
52:13
And Luke and Christy to further work as an area, I think, that here in
52:18
academia, we can really open some interesting aspects up that we really
52:23
haven't looked at very closely.
52:25
So thank you very much.
52:26
I appreciate that.
52:27
One of the elements of intergenerational transfer that I wanted to identify
52:30
and did was the transfer of David E.
52:33
Davis.
52:34
Because he started and wrote the track in 1955, and then of course
52:38
goes on to transport Sports Cars Illustrated into car driving.
52:42
And I think there, again, is a tremendous amount of work to be done in that vein.
52:47
Thank you for bringing up Stan Mott's Sensational Cyclops.
52:51
I haven't thought of that for years.
52:53
I used to love that cartoon when I was a kid, and that was almost the first
52:56
thing I went to in Road and Track magazine, and I was just struck when
53:01
I saw the picture of the Cyclops car.
53:04
The similarity, To R2 D2, and also more recently, the Minions.
53:11
There's some kind of comparison there, and it just makes me wonder if they were
53:14
derived from Stan Mott's cartoon car.
53:18
A big concern that I've been reading about is how to keep and
53:21
encourage, you know, younger people to get involved in the hobby.
53:25
Can you talk a little bit about what automotive publications such as Hagerty
53:30
and others are doing now to ensure that?
53:35
I know that Hagerty has actually made a concrete effort and began partnering
53:39
with us about Fifteen years ago, there was a forum called the Collectors
53:43
Foundation that was trying to look for the next generation of collectors.
53:47
And so, Hagerty has made a very intentional effort, placed a number
53:51
of grads with them where they were trying to produce content, whether
53:55
it was YouTube channels or article series that were written by young
54:00
enthusiasts, for young enthusiasts.
54:01
So, Hagerty is one of the places you can look as part of their business model.
54:06
As far as other journals and things, I think that would make a great thing
54:10
to maybe pass the mic around if you had a minute because there's probably
54:13
some people who have some really great answers about where that happened.
54:16
I can tell you, of the meetings and conferences I've been to in
54:20
the last five years, it's the question that everybody is asking.
54:24
I might speak just in general about Uh, that being part of the motivation for
54:27
this project, because certainly that question comes up at every event I go to.
54:31
And I think the reason I was so interested in researching Bond's definition of car
54:36
culture is that that process of having young people involved is not the process
54:41
of using Bond's model of car culture.
54:43
Young people are enthusiastic about cars, but they have their own dimensions and
54:47
their own paths that they want to take.
54:48
And trying to force an intergenerational approach on them is just simply
54:52
untenable and simply will not work.
54:54
And so, there are plenty of forms of car culture out there today.
54:57
It's just that we need to think more broadly about what
54:59
that means to young people.
55:00
Uh, let me dovetail on that.
55:02
The car culture is alive and well where we live.
55:04
It's young people everywhere who are crazy and passionate about the car.
55:07
But, It takes a lot of listening on our part because they come
55:11
for reasons different from what we're ready to provide.
55:15
And so we are in a constant metamorphosis at our institution, trying to figure
55:19
out how we can dovetail technical opportunities in space to what the
55:24
next generation views as car culture.
55:26
And so it has to be something that's in motion.
55:29
Looking at both Christy's and Ken's portion of the presentation, we can sort
55:33
of understand why women were portrayed in a certain way during this time, as
55:38
opposed to car guy culture, because, you know, the Association of Women
55:41
in Cars sort of devalued the cars.
55:44
But I'm a little perplexed as to why you feel that they were so adverse
55:48
to representing the next generation.
55:51
Do you think it made it too Family oriented, too feminine,
55:55
or was there some other reason?
55:56
My theory of that is that the reason you're here for the car is because
56:00
you had an experience that made something significant in your life.
56:03
It tied something together for you, and it was part of your meaning.
56:08
And so, you've come to understand car culture from your very personal
56:12
experience that's dramatically different from the next generation.
56:16
And so, they will find their meaning in a car in a way that's different.
56:20
And so, we're just bound by our life experiences in a way that means we
56:23
have to intentionally set aside our beliefs and listen and let someone
56:27
else tell us what car culture is.
56:30
That's my suspicion.
56:31
We're talking a lot about the different ways that younger generation
56:34
is interacting with car culture.
56:36
Personally, I'm a little confused about what that is, what the differences are.
56:39
And in my mind, I'm thinking the movie American Graffiti versus Fast and Furious.
56:44
I mean, is that what we're talking about, or?
56:45
Yes, you are.
56:46
You're talking about Tuners and Bokazuka, Japanese cars.
56:51
And you're talking about Grand Theft Auto and you're talking about all
56:54
kinds of connection points as gamer societies and the way they connect
56:58
across the relationships and it has to do with the scarcity of space
57:02
that's available to work on cars, which is something we just assume.
57:05
And so it is some demographic and physiological things about the
57:09
dimensions of the interactions.
57:11
It's about the solitude of music, where every person is their own music generator,
57:15
where we grew up in generations where that was a connection, touchstone.
57:19
And so it's actually this whole complex set of technological changes
57:23
that creates a very individualistic experience, different from ours.
57:26
That was terrific.
57:27
I mean, we could spend the rest of the afternoon on this, but I just want to
57:30
thank you very much again for coming out.
57:31
Please, a round of applause for all of the Pearson people.
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