Cars of the century, again again.

[Will Owen <nashwill@yahoo.com>]

Darren Abate wrote:

>I just don't see how cars like the Civic and the Corolla can be
thought to
>have had more influence on world culture than cars like the Mustang and
>*any* Ferrari

For the same reason that the Model T (my personal choice for #1) had
more influence than the Packard Twin Six: not only did more people own
and drive them, they extended the automobile culture into whole new
places, for good or ill. 

Okay, let's back up here. Are we talking about a given car's influence
on automotive technology, or about its influence on world culture?
While you can't totally disentangle the two, I prefer to take the
wider view of the car as an agent for change in human history. One of
the most stunningly lovely pieces of machinery I've ever seen was a
Brescia Bugatti (it was like a Gerald Wingrove model that you could
drive!), but its impact on human culture was pretty much limited to
teaching a few Europeans that a good small car could often whip a
mediocre big car's butt. Mr. Ford's contraption, on the other hand,
was Point A on a line that led directly to the Interstate system;
whether you approve of that or not, it's where we are, and the Model T
was what did it. Not just here, either: the rural US was not the only
place in the world where "Ford" was another word for "car."

Will Owen
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