A Tale of Two Icons
1. An Open and Shut Case The best-selling vehicle in the 1990s and 2000s was something called a "sport-utility vehicle." The design, based on a truck chassis, consisted of a large, comfortable space for driver and passengers based on the elevated, enclosed space of the 18-wheeler. Two icons for two eras. Openness vs. closedness. Itching to go vs. hunkering down. Sleek grace vs. ungainly bulbousness. Dune buggy vs. tank. The hardtop convertible was the expression of a generation that had faced big problems, disasters really, and overcome them. First the Great Depression, then World War II. A generation of peace, affluence, hope. The SUV was the expression of a conscriptionless generation whose biggest problems had been deciding whether to watch MTV or VH1. We (or at least the top quartile of us) had got ours and by God we were going to keep and protect it. Surrounded by three tons of metal, we rode in captain's chairs above the hoi polloi in their little foreign tin cans, bless their souls. A generation of peace, affluence, and unbridled greed. Fun vs. fear.
If the source of threat is not clear, then fight and flight cease to be viable options. Who do you fight if you can't identify the enemy? Where to do flee to if you don't know where the enemy is? In such a situation, the only remaining choice seems to be: freeze. Batten down the hatches. Raise the moat bridge. Roll up the tinted windows. Lock the vault-like doors. Click, click, click. That kind of freezing we see clearly in the long tradition of conservative behavior-- political, religious, philosophical, scientific. And it's easy to see the source. On a planet shaped by volcanic disaster, in a universe of fiercely burning and exploding stars, little animals either learn caution or they perish. No time for whimsy, fun, or creative questioning. We live in a dangerous place and only the most aggressively acquisitive survive. Social Darwinism? Yes. Of course. Creatures who choose to live in fear even after old threats have vanished will find reasons aplenty in this world for their choice. Sure, I'd rather be zipping about in a Miata, but I've got to think of my family and my future. Let us make our daily rounds in the high security of a Suburban and we feel both comfortable and oh so safe. Put a candidate who defends the affluent status quo in front of a populace 50% of whom are invested in the market and the result is SUV politics. Damn the poor and disadvantage, the differently gendered, the other-skinned, and full speed ahead! And anyone who opposes us is to be treated as ENEMY! Yes, we have seen the enemy and it is NOT us, that's for sure. The enemy that we've been looking for so long and so hard is anyone who shows any sign of hope, joy, generosity, humility. Frozen, petrified in our bunker-like cars and gated-community homes, surrounded by the thick paper walls of our vested stock options, we lash out at THEM, those damnable OTHERS. They, with their careless, CAREFREE THINKING, are endangering us all! If a puritan is a person horrified at the thought that someone, somewhere, is having fun, a conservative is a person who is terrified at the thought that someone, somewhere is having freedom. Can you imagine General Motors today designing and selling a car like that Cadillac 4-door hardtop? No? So far have we fallen. So fearful, so freedomless have we become. The massive physical prisons we've built in the last 20 years is only an outward and visible sign of the massive, greed-based internal prisons we as a nation now inhabit 24/7/365. The miracle of the 2000 election is not that Bush won, but that it was even close. If there is hope in this SUV world it is in the almost paradoxical fact that the fear-guy, for all his electoral-college success, is a minority president. Full steam ahead!
END **Mr. Bumbera has been wrestling with the significance of car design for some time now. You can read his two earlier reports here, and here.
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