Goodbye VW Type 2 Microbus, Transporter, Camper!

Memories from the past! A transporter owned by a Davidson College fraternity brother that burned up in 1969 as he was about to leave to join the Peace Corps. Two New Orleans friends, Donald Keintz and Dawson Nesbitt, who owned them. Poor Donald struggled mightily to keep his alive. A fire in one in Baltimore in the 1990s, where I stuck my head in the burning vehicle to save someone's books!

Sad to say, but production ended in Brazil of the Type 2 December 31, 2013. Precautions concerning safety trumped practical transportation and tradition.

How many of you know how a controversy ( The Chicken War") over the Type 2 in 1964 led to import duties so high that it all but guaranteed the dominance of the Detroit 3 in the light truck industry? Seems that the EEC wanted to keep out American chicken out of France and West Germany and increased duties. President Lyndon Johnson retaliated by among other things slapping a 25% import duty on light trucks. The duty has never gone away, but it discouraged truck imports, first from Germany, then Japan. The advantage fell to the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado, and the only way for foreign makes to compete was to built plants in the U.S., like Toyota did in San Antonio.

1950

1953

1959

1972

Heroic Road Trips Taken During the 1920s and 1930s

Hi Folks-- recently I picked up some interesting books dealing with heroic road trips undertaken during the 1920s and 1930s. These stories proved to be not only fascinating travel descriptions but also involved struggles between humans and rather primitive auto machinery.  Their courage is humbling to those of us who won't leave home on a road tip with our restored cars without Haggerty or AAA towing insurance!

1. H.H. McWilliams. The Diabolical: An Account of the Adventures of Five People Who Set Out in a Converted Ford Lorry to Make a Journey from Palestine to England Across Asia Minor and the Balkans. London: Duckworth, 1934. This book presents one crazy story to say the least. Take a modified Ford truck named the "Diabolical" start in the middle east, and drive to Europe. Excellent detail of roads, auto services, people and cultures (the ugliest people live in Bulgaria!), issues with customs and borders, etc.

2.George S. Counts. A Ford Crosses Soviet Russia. Boston: Stratford, 1930.

3.Guy de Larigaudie, trans. by Andree J. Rie. Flivver to Cambodia: Two Boy Scouts Across Asia. New York: Putnam's Sons, 1939. Actually two crazy young Frenchmen who are Scouts (although they seem a bit old for this) and their drive to Saigon. Viva La France!

4. Joseph Henry Jackson. Mexican Interlude. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Husband and wife try out the new Pan-American Highway. This socially pretentious pair tour by auto a Mexico that beyond Monterrey  has not been driven by many at the time. A sugar coated trip description with some value as to details associated with Mexican culture of the day. Everything is rosy, it seems, in a land that was far from that.

5.H. Birch Richardson. High Street, Africa. Edinburgh and London, 1936.

Our Prayers are with you, Michael Schmacher!

He always has lived at the edge --  F1, motorcycles, skiing. Only the great can look fear in the eye with defiance.










1






1

The Penultimate Road Food -- Roller Hot Dogs

Hi folks -- well, nobody lives forever!  Whenever I go on a road trip, I always look forward to stopping at a Love's Travel Center and partaking in my favorite road meal -- roller dogs.  Not any hot dog, mind you, but a Jalapeno Cheese Dog, or Cheddar Cheese Dog, or maybe even a Polish Sausage or Brat. I paid $3 for 2 today; at my local Speedway roller dogs go for 2 for $2.22.  Juicy, tasty, coffin nails.

To top this off one might buy a hostess filled pie -- chocolate my favorite, lemon or apple also OK.

There ought to be a law to keep people like me from shortening my life, Mayor Bloomberg!

The Automobile and American Life -- Senior Seminar Syllabus, Spring, 2014

Hi folks -- here is a draft of the syllabus I will be using the coming spring term.  Comments and criticisms are welcome!

John

SEMINAR--HST 485P1 SPRING, 2014

The Automobile, the Road, and American Life

Class Meeting: Wednesday, 3:00-5:50 p.m.

HM 468

Instructor: Dr. John A. Heitmann

Office: HM 435

Telephone: x92803

E-mail: Jheitmann1@udayton.edu

Office Hours:

MW10-10:50 a.m., W 2-2:50 p.m., or by appointment.

It has been said that the automobile is the perfect technological symbol of American culture, a tangible expression of our quest to level space, time and class, and a reflection of our restless mobility, social and otherwise. In this seminar we will explore together the place of the automobile in American life, and how it transformed business, life on the farm and in the city, the nature and organization of work, leisure time, and the arts. This is a most complex transition that we will study, as the automobile transformed everyday life and the environment in which we operate.  It influenced the foods we eat; music we listen to; risks we take; places we visit; errands we run; emotions we feel; movies we watch; stress we endure; and, the air we breathe.

Required Texts:

John Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (McFarland, 2009).

Warren Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-194 (Johns Hopkins, 1999).

            Jack Keroauc, On the Road (Penguin, 1997).

            John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America (Penguin, 2012).

           

           

Grades: Course work will consist of seminar lectures, discussions, presentations, films, and optional field trips to the Packard Museum and the Taj Garag. Grades will be based on class discussion and 3 three page book review papers (45%), an assigned article class presentation (15%) and a research paper (40%).

            In this class we will define the seminar as a shared learning experience in which one of its purposes is to create new knowledge. Therefore, the research paper is the most significant assignment of this course. It should critically explore an area of knowledge related to the automobile and American life, and ideally should be 10 pages double spaced in length, with additional footnotes and bibliography, and furthermore draw on minimally 15 sources, primary and secondary. I plan to meet with you individually and collectively during the semester to ensure that your topic has a proper focus and that sources are readily available for your project. A late paper will be penalized one-half letter grade per day.

           

Among the term paper topics are the following suggestions:

The Automobile and World War I

The American Auto Industry in China before WWII

The Architecture of Early Automobile Plants

George Romney and American Motors

A Reassessment of the Life of Henry Ford II

General Motors at Lordstown, Ohio and Labor Issues

Dayton, Ohio as a "GM Town"

Fast Women -- Women Race Drivers (The Bugatti Queen, Denise McCluggage, and others)

Women as Depicted in Automobile Advertising during the 1970s (you should narrow down the decades)

Seat Belts (or the Airbag, or Crumple Zones) and the Coming of Automobile Safety

Auto Racing -- any era

A History of the Driver's License

African-Americans living in the South and the Automobile during the 1920s

The American Drive-In

The Promise and Ultimate Disappointment with the Rotary Wankel Engine

Automation and the Post-WWII American Auto Industry

The VW Comes to America

The Automobile and American Literature

The Automobile and Film -- any era

The "Fast and Furious" Franchise

Music about the Automobile or about Highways -- From Race Music to Rock and Roll

Drinking and Driving in the 20^thCentury

Hip-Hop and Cars – themes and artists

Elon Musk and the Coming of the Tesla Motor Car

           

            My book The Automobile and American Life is our key common reading in this class and the touchstone for our discussions. While you will not be tested on this reading, you will be responsible for reading this book and critically commenting on it in class.

           

            Additionally, you must select from the syllabus an article that you will report on to the class at the scheduled time. All articles listed are on Isidore; you are to prepare a 20-30 minute presentation in which you discuss the author’s main theme(s), the subject topic of the book and its central narrative, and finally your own assessment of this book and how it enhanced(or stultified) your knowledge and interest in the history of the automobile in America.

Schedule of Assignments and Class Meetings

Week 1 — January 13

Introduction. What our cars tell us about ourselves. The automobile and its inherent contradictions.  The automobile in art and as art.

            Reading: Heitmann, Introduction.

            Film:  “Wild Wheels”

                       

Week 2 — January 22

            Pioneers

Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 1.

            Film: “Horatio’s Drive”

Article Report(s): James J. Flink, "Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness," American Quarterly, 24 (October, 1972), 451-473; Pamela Walker Laird, '"The Car Without a Single Weakness," Early Automobile Advertising," Technology &

            Culture, 37 (October, 1996), 796-812.

Week 3 — January 29

            Henry Ford, Fordism, and the Model T.

            Reading:  Heitmann, Chapter 2

            Films:  Mack Sennet, “Gussle’s Day of Rest( 1915).”

“California Straight Ahead,” (1925).

            Article report(s): Christopher Wells, "The Road to the Model T: Culture, Road                  

            Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the American Motor Age," Technology          

            & Culture, 48 (July, 2007), 497-523; Kevin Borg, "'The "Chauffeur Problem' in the

            Early Auto Era: Structuration Theory and the Users of Technology," Technology and       

            Culture 40 (1999), 797-832.

Week 4 — February 5

            The Rise of General Motors and Sloanism     

            Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 3.

            Film: “Roger and Me;” "Master Hands."

Article report(s): Blaine Brownell, " A Symbol of Modernity: Attitudes Toward the Automobile in Southern Cities in the 1920s," American Quarterly, 24 (March, 1972), 20-44.

           

Week  5 — February 12

            America on the Road: The Highway and the City;

            Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 4

            Film: "Route 66;" “Taken for a Ride”

Review of Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 (Johns Hopkins, 1997) is due.

Week 6  -- February 19

             Women Behind the Wheel; Religion, Sex, and the Automobile

            Readings:  Heitmann, Chapter 5

Article reports: Virginia Scharf, "The Lady Takes the Wheel," The Journal of Arizona History, 34 (1993), 419-32.

            Films: “Thelma and Louise;”

Week 7 — February 26

            Library and Consultation Day

Week 8 -- March 12

            The Interwar Years; The Great Depression

            Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 6.

            Music:  Virginia Liston, Bertha Chippie Hill, Robert Johnson

            Article report: Peter Norton, "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street, Technology and Culture, 2007, 331-359.

Films: “The Crowd Roars” (1932); “Burn ‘Em Up Barnes"(1934)

            Term Paper Proposal Due; The Completion of a Working Bibliography of no less than 15 Sources, 5 of which are articles.

           

Week 9 — March 19

             WWII and the Reconversion Economy

           

            Reading: Heitmann, Chapter 7.

Article report(s): Cotton Seiler, "Statist means to Individualist Ends: Subjectivity, Automobility, and the Cold War State," American Studies, 44 (Fall, 2003), 5-36.

            Film: “Tucker”

Review of Jack Keroauc's On the Road is Due

Week 10 — March 26

             Chrome Dreams of the 1950s

Readings:  Heitmann, Chapter 8

Article report: Karal Ann Marling, "America's Love Affair with the Automobile in the Television Age," Design Quarterly, 46 (1989), 5-20.

            Film:   “Rebel Without a Cause;” “Thunder Road.”

            Music:  Jackie Berenson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Chuck Berry.

           

Week 11 — April 2

Muscle Cars of the 1960s; Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys

            Readings: Heitmann, Chapter 9

Music: Dead Man’s Curve — Jan and Dean; Little Duce Coupe — The Beach Boys; GTO – Ronny and the Daytonas;

            Article report:  John Heitmann and Todd Uhlman, " Stealing Freedom:  Auto-Theft    and the Rebellious Revitalization of the Masculine American Self in Visual Culture"

 Journal of Popular Culture, forthcoming.

            Film: “Bullitt;” “American Graffiti”

 Review of Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of Americais due

Week 12 —  April 9 --  No Class -- work on term papers!

           

Week 13 -- April 16

            Foreign Competition: VW, Nissan and Toyota

            Japan Inc. in the USA

            Germans in the New South

Article report: Rudi Volti, "A Century of Automobility," Technology & Culture, 37 (October, 1996), 663-685.

             Reading: Heitmann,Chapter 10.

            Film: “The Fast and Furious;” “Gone in Sixty Seconds”

            Music:  Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Six Mix-a-Lot, David Banner

Week 14 —April  23 -- Term -Papers Due

            Research Paper Discussion and Closing Statements

Chinese students buy expensive cars, at the University of Dayton and elsewhere!

Hi folks -- Ed Garten sent this article along to me form the Bloomberg News. indeed, at the University of Dayton our Chinese students often drive very nice cars, usually far better than either the faculty or American students. I have seen them behind the wheel of Porsche Panameras and Cayennes, M-Bs, and Audis. It can be quite irritating, as foreign students often drive into faculty lot "B" just to drop as student off or pick them up. And, as we learned last year, these cars can be more than the students can handle, as two died in a crash on Mad River Road.  I understand that when talking in a group to a student advisor, they will argue as to "who drives the cheapest car!"

Chinese students at the University of Iowa began coming into Carousel Motors in Iowa City about three years ago to get theirMercedes and Audi luxury cars serviced. Finally, general manager Pat Lind started asking if they’d ever considered his dealership when they made their original purchase. No, the students told him. Back in China, they’d been told to buy their wheels in Chicago before heading to college.

So Lind began sponsoring the university’s Chinese student association, which sends information to incoming students in China before they arrive in the U.S. Sales to Chinese students doubled and now make up about 5 percent of the vehicles sold at the dealership, located about two miles from campus. “We became an advertiser,” Lind says, “and got our face in front of them.”

The number of students from China enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities reached 235,597 during the past academic year, more than triple the 64,757 enrolled in 2002-03, according to the Institute of International Education. These students often come from families that are better off than the typical American college student’s, says Sid Krommenhoek, a founder of Zinch, a consulting firm owned by textbook rental company Chegg that works with prospective Chinese students. Shelling out $50,000 for a high-end car is viewed as an affordable status symbol compared with back home, where such cars can cost two to three times as much because of hefty import duties.

Among Chinese student car buyers in the U.S. in the past two years, 32 percent paid cash

Zinch surveyed 25,000 Chinese students last year and found that 62 percent said they could afford to spend at least $40,000 each year on a college education. “Most schools are recruiting [Chinese] students for whom the difference between a $20,000 and a $40,000 education is a rounding error,” Krommenhoek says. “This is a very attractive demographic for foreign brands.”

Chinese students in the U.S. purchased about $15.5 billion in new and used vehicles in 2012 and 2013 through October, according to Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research. His figures, based on car sales, student and family visa data, and other factors, include Chinese students attending high school, undergraduate, and graduate institutions in the U.S. A comparable group of American students purchased $4.7 billion in vehicles, CNW estimates.

The interest in autos among Chinese students in the U.S. shouldn’t be surprising. Teeming demand on the mainland has boosted global automakers’ profits in recent years. While China’s austerity measures slowed luxury sales somewhat in 2013, deliveries there of Audi—for many years China’s No. 1 luxury nameplate—increased this year through September by 23 percent, to 366,038. Only 114,411 Audis were sold in the U.S. during the same period.

A little more than half the vehicles bought by Chinese students in the U.S. during the 22-month period CNW studied were new, with an average purchase price of $52,796; and 32 percent of buyers paid cash. Those buying used vehicles paid about $36,500, and 58 percent used cash. About 40 percent of their U.S. counterparts purchased new vehicles, with an average price of $19,472, CNW says. And fewer than 5 percent of those buyers paid cash.

Lind’s Chinese student customers almost always pay with cash. “Many times they’ll come in here,” he says. “They’ll pick out the car and say, ‘OK, I’ve got to call my parents and tell them how much to wire over. I’ve only got $20,000 in my account and I need $50,000, so they’ll wire the difference.’ ”

Some dealerships, such as Mercedes-Benz of Eugene, in Oregon, have hired Mandarin-speaking sales staff to deal with the rush of Chinese students craving luxe rides. Steve Shaheen, general manager of Okemos Auto Collection, a BMW and Mercedes dealer near Michigan State University in East Lansing, says he’s seen his sales to Chinese students rise to as much as 15 percent of his total business, from zero five years ago. Chris Perantoni, sales manager at Royal on the Eastside, an Audi and Volkswagen dealership near Indiana University at Bloomington, trumpeted in his advertising that the store had a salesman who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese—until the staffer’s visa expired and he had to leave. “Him being bilingual definitely helped,” says Perantoni, who estimates that as much as 10 percent of his annual sales are now to Chinese students. “We’d love to have him back.”

A poem for car folks! Happy Holidays!

From Britain:

May the open road caress you, may each mile bestow a curve,
May the pavement be unbroken, may you never need to swerve.

May your route be clear of snow and ice, may your traction be supreme,
May your ample arse not prove too sparse for that road trip of your dreams.

May your brake light blaze with brilliance, may you never need to pass
May your next trip be the best one yet, may your tank stay full of gas.

As you tour whichever route you wish, be it mountains, coast or canyons
May your quest be blessed with the very best of reliable companions.

So please accept this wish from me, with peace and health abiding
May happiness dwell in your home, may good fortune plague your driving.