A Question About the Trabant

A producer from NPR contacted me yesterday concerning the Trabant.  He wanted me to talk about the Trabant as a reflection of the dysfunction in East Germany, but I wanted to shift the conversation to another topic I think more significant, namely that mobility that the Trabant afforded DDR citizens whetted their desire for greater freedom. So I guess he didn't like that and moved on.  That is OK, because the media shouldn't control discourse in all cases.

Note the fashion of the young woman and the shape of the Trabant.

So why are so many East Germans fond of this car? Why do they collect and show them? Surely not because the car is a reminder of the dark world inside the DDR.

Early Motorsports in America: Interpretive Approaches

Hi folks -- a presentation proposal just sent in for the Society of Automotive Historians Tenth Biennial Conference, to be held at Stanford University, April 10-12, 2014.

Title: Early Motorsports in America: Interpretive Approaches

This proposed presentation marks my initial foray into an area where the number of studies done by academic historians and scholars can be counted on a two hands. In contrast, popular histories of early automobile racing proliferate, some researched and written with great acuity, others less so. To my knowledge, there exists not one academic study of monograph length on early automobile racing.  Some might argue that perhaps that void is good thing, given the turgid work that academics can produce! Seriously, however, a careful examination of this seminal era offers endless possibilities to see a bigger picture, and to offer new interpretations critical to our understanding of the place of the automobile in American life.

Undoubtedly, the prevailing theme in the literature on early auto racing  -- no matter whether written by academic or "buff" historians -- centers on the symbiotic relationship between pioneering racing and the emergence of automobile production and use. Since the first decade of the 20th century, authors have explored how racing technologically influenced the manufacture of the first generation of motor cars and vice-versa. This is a question of primary importance, and reflected in the previously written surveys by John Rae, James Flink, and others, who traced connections in terms of demonstrator technologies, significant advertising strategies, utility and practicality, and the necessity for better roads.  An interpretive argument of enormous import at the time, it best justified the human carnage that took place on road and track.  This rationale, then, provides one significant wing for the story of "Glory Road," where nationalism, innovation, heroism, and blood sacrifice come together for progress and the common good.

However, recent historiography has shifted away from this traditional view, and has focused on the significance of speed as being the transformative signifier associated with early auto racing. Pointing to an interpretation first articulated in Wolfgang Sachs For Love of the Automobile (1984), Tom McCarthy asserted in 2007 that "as the first cars whizzed down city streets, they drew crowds of curious and the enthralled, and early auto races demonstrated the thrilling possibilities of road travel at breathtaking speeds."  In 2012 David Lucsko followed McCarthy up by concluding that "racing did not simply get the word out. It was the word. Outright speed remained important to the dreams of a nation now on wheels." The American adoption of the automobile, then, can fundamentally be seen as a revolution in ways of perceiving and conceptualizing time and space. Speed then entranced a public eager to adopt a democratic technology that leveled space and time, and consequently society.

One final interpretation to address -- among several that I have not mentioned -- is that of class and gender.  The era of early auto racing racing -- ending for my purposes in 1921 with Jimmy Murphy's victory at Lemans -- was one that witnessed the transition from wealthy elites as drivers to the professionals, a transition well worth further study. And as Ian Boutle concluded in 2012 in the context of British racing at Brooklands, these two decades can be described in ways going beyond portraying racing as a technological spectacle. Indeed, Boutle asserts that the complexity of how motorsport defined car culture can be seen in terms of manly strength, gentlemanly virtue, and mental supremacy. Whether Boutle's analysis can be extended to the American scene awaits further study, however. 

Why do men race automobiles?

Taken from Borgeson, The Golden Age of the American Car p.3



"Why do they do it, then?" One element, certainly not exclusive to motor racing, is the gamble for the ultimate in stakes. "Dicing with Death" is the British cliché for it, and death wins s the toss all too often. Along with this gamble is the gamble for victory against all one's competitors and the heady atmosphere of anxiety and aspiration which it creates. The delirium of victory in this esoteric form of gladiatorial combat is beyond the hopes of most of the contestants, yet they remain in avid competition. It is a strange drug, indeed. It is compounded by the emotional thrill of the whole experience -- from the completion of a design, to the drawing board, to the patterns and forgings and machine work and assembly. Then to the dynamometer and finally to the track. The clout on the back of tremendous acceleration; the exhilaration of blazing speed, hurtling through the wind crouched in an open cockpit; the thrill of the sound and the smell and of the machine's savage, and the driver hopes, exquisite response to his slightest wish or command; and much, much more. There are plenty of men who will do almost anything to get a ride in a race car, with money the farthest thing from their thoughts. A very real part of the thrill is sexual, a statement which will not come as news to most psychologists nor to most members of the racing fraternity. There are those of us who very consciously can experience degrees of orgiastic transport with a suitably inspiring mechanical companion.

Fatal Accident, Tony Bettenahusen, 1961

Two David Brown Aston Martins at the Dayton Concours, September 15, 2013

Rockstar's GTA: Its History and the Controversy that Surrounds It.

As millions of fans await the release of Grand Theft Auto 5 on Sept. 17, the game remains as controversial as ever for its depiction of crime and violence.

Many have called the video game series the cause — or at least a sign — of a cultural decline in America, but an auto historian and author says society's fascination with car thieves is as old as cars themselves.

"In film, books and legend, the car thief is a mix of villain, ingenious thrill-seeker and sympathetic outlaw," said John Heitmann, University of Dayton history professor. "This fiction often follows reality, which is a cops-and-robbers arms race between theft-prevention technology and sophisticated thieves."

Heitmann is the co-author of Stealing Cars: Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino scheduled for release by Johns Hopkins University Press this coming spring. The book includes a section on the cultural phenomenon of the Grand Theft Auto video game series.

"Stealing a car in Grand Theft Auto's digital world is a discommodious combination of reality and fantasy," Heitmann writes in the book. "It is undemanding and nearly always without consequence, unencumbered by drivers, locks, The Club, alarms, On Star, security cameras or any other theft prevention system. The automobile is strangely disposable in this world, and the thief is incorrigible.

"The academic debate over the game, like the political and moral one, is conflicted. But Rockstar continues to sell millions of units of Grand Theft Auto."

Stealing Cars examines a wide range of related topics that includes motives and methods, technological deterrents, place and space, institutional responses, international borders and cultural reflections. Heitmann and co-author Rebecca H. Morales, former curator of the San Diego Automotive Museum, examine the history of car theft, the cultural and societal response, and how the thief has become as advanced as the cars themselves.

"Many people are fascinated by aspects of automobile history, but many more enjoy the topic of crime, in terms of motives, methods, escaping capture and of course solving the crime and bringing criminals to justice," Heitmann said.

Drawing on sources that include interviews, government documents, patents, sociological and psychological studies, magazines, monographs, scholarly periodicals, film, fiction, and digital gaming, Heitmann and Morales tell a story that highlights both human creativity and some of the paradoxes of American life.

Heitmann is also the author of The Automobile and American Life (2009), which looks at how the automobile transformed the American economy, arts, community life, the law and other aspects of American culture. Visit his blog at the related link.

(Photo credit: Tamahikari Tammas, Flickr Photostream)

For more information, contact Cameron Fullam, assistant director of media relations, at 937-229-3256 or fullam@udayton.edu.

My Stealing Cars: Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino Cover Art