The Road Salt- Deicer Planned Obsolescence Used Car Conspiracy

 First, a confession: I hate the use of road salt on public highways. There has got to be a better way, outside of moving to southern California. Growing up near Buffalo, New York, my family was of very modest means, and consequently my father often drove rusty cars. One could Ziebart, use chrome protector, go regularly to the car  wash -- but eventually the dreaded rust spots appeared. The only way to keep a car from rusting was to take it off the road from November to April.

All of the first few cars I owned -- before I moved  away from western New York -- a 1959 MGA, a 1966 Mustang, and a 1969 VW Karman-Ghia -- all rusted to holy hell.

As a historian, I smell a rust rat. But I have yet to track this story down. During the late 1930s, one major topic of conversation as a result of falling new car sales and a dramatic upswing in used car purchases, was the "used car problem." How does Detroit get rid of a used car inventory? Dealers were given incentives to buy cars and scrap them. State legislatures began creating inspection programs to get unsafe older cars off the roads. And road salt began to be applied to roads rather than sand or ashes. It all came together around 1938. Now I just have to prove it.

The fact is that mechanicals on cars rarely wear out, but in the northern states bodies slowly disintegrate. And so a reuse culture, so traditional in American life, was gradually replaced by one of planned obsolescence. WWII scrap drives took this tend one step further. And  new consumer culture of buying a new car for the Mrs. every two years became popular by the prosperity decade of the 1950s.