The fascination with the automobile is something that seems to have been born even before there were cars. The machines caught on so quickly, and developed so fast, that it’s hard to believe they’re still an invention of the last hundred years or so. Most great-grandparents didn’t have cars their entire lives, which suggests how quickly they got into the public circulation, as well as the imagination of teenagers everywhere. The teenage fascination with cars is even more recent, where, in the 1950s, teens in post-war countries were growing up with these for the very first time.

It was a major shift in the consciousness of the public, and teenagers had a way to express their frustrations and get out some excess energy by putting it into their cars. The same sensibility has lasted to this day, and perhaps is even more prevalent now than it was back then. Whether someone is hanging fuzzy dice from a rear-view mirror, or souping up their Ford pick-up , the dream is still the same: to ride around in a mean machine. Definitions of what makes one car a potent street fighter have changed, and continue to change, but the mechanics of nostalgia are still the same.

It’s interesting to see how people, entering middle age, can re-visit their former teenage selves, when they get a wrench in their hand, but the change is almost visible. It doesn’t seem to matter, either, if they’re trying to renovate a classic, or working on maintenance with a Toyota pick-up repair manual in hand, it’s the manual effort of getting into the engine that sparks off the moment when the love of the car was born for the very first time. The 1950s might be gone, but there’s every reason to believe that the momentum of that particular moment in time hasn’t lost any speed. Speed is at the heart of car culture, whether it’s the tires on the road, or the voyages we make in our minds to a past that’s not so distant after all.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.