Car Cultures

Perhaps more than any other commodity or “thing,” cars have been linked to the emergence and development of consumer societies. There are two reasons for this: first, the car or automobile appeared as a new and distinct object of individual consumption just as modern consumer culture was becoming established; and second, the car has led in the transition from being an object whose standardized [Page 134]mass production helped shape the economy of modern societies to being one whose variety and appeal to individual choice transformed it into a consumer society. David Gartman describes this history by showing how the early car culture of leisure for the very rich who could afford handbuilt machines was transformed into a protoconsumer culture by Henry Ford's mass produced Model ...