Ingrassia - Engines of change: a history of the american dream in fifteen cars

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PRAISE FOR

The prose is lapidary, the tone informed by humor. Paul Ingrassia has written an automobile book that goes beyond the genre; its for anyone interested in modernity and what led us to where we are. MILES COLLIER

The whole country in fifteen carsthats crowded! And Engines of Change is indeed packed from rocker panels to sunroof with good stories and salient facts about the automobiles that shaped America, from the oddity of the Model T to the oddballs driving the Prius. P.J. OROURKE

You will never look at a car the same way after reading Engines of Change as I strongly recommend to anyone who relishes great storytelling that combines biography, social and political history, science, and romance. Having driven and virtually lived in a 1953 Plymouth on a years journey across Eisenhowers America, and having followed that up many driving years later by writing on the innovations of Henry Ford, I thought I knew something of the history of cars. I was all the more surprisedand vastly entertainedby the riches in Ingrassias stories of fifteen vehicles embodying the American dream from the Model T to the Beetle, the Corvair, the Corvette, and the Mustang to the pickups and the Prius (driven by the Pious). Even readers who cannot tell a camshaft from a cami-knicker will find fascination in a gallery of characters depicted by Ingrassia with vivacity and wit. SIR HAROLD EVANS

Paul Ingrassia knows where the bodies are buried, or maybe where the keys to the American car business got lost. With a swift, sure scalpel honed by years as the industry reporter, he anatomizes Detroit in all its glory and inglorious decline. A thoughtful, propulsive assay of the machine that changed a nation, a world. DAN NEIL

A NARRATIVE LIKE NO OTHER:
A CULTURAL HISTORY THAT
EXPLORES HOW CARS HAVE BOTH
PROPELLED AND REFLECTED
THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
FROM THE MODEL T TO THE PRIUS.

F rom the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod, Americas history is a vehicular historyan idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Paul Ingrassia.

Ingrassia offers a wondrous epic in fifteen automobiles, including the Corvette, the Beetle, and the Chevy Corvair, as well as the personalities and tales behind them: Robert McNamaras unlikely role in Lee Iacoccas Mustang, John Z. DeLoreans Pontiac GTO, Henry Fords Model T, as well as Hondas Accord, the BMW 3 Series, and the Jeep, among others.

Through these cars and these characters, Ingrassia shows how the car has expressed the particularly American tension between the lure of freedom and the obligations of utility. He also takes us through the rise of American manufacturing, the suburbanization of the country, the birth of the hippie and the yuppie, the emancipation of women, and many more fateful episodes and eras, including the cars unintended consequences: trial lawyers, energy crises, and urban sprawl. Narrative history of the highest caliber, Engines of Change is an entirely edifying new way to look at the American story.

PAUL INGRASSIA, formerly the Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and later the president of Dow Jones Newswires, is the deputy editor-in-chief of Reuters. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 (with Joseph B. White) for reporting on management crises at General Motors, he is the author of Crash Course: The American Automobile Industrys Road from Glory to Disaster. He lives in New Jersey.

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JACKET PHOTOGRAPH CAR CULTURE/CORBIS

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS VENNE

COPYRIGHT 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

ALSO BY PAUL INGRASSIA

Crash Course: The American Automobile Industrys Road to
Bankruptcy and Bailoutand Beyond

Comeback: The Fall & Rise of the American Automobile Industry
(with Joseph B. White)

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Copyright 2012 by Paul Ingrassia

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2012

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Designed by Ruth Lee-Mui

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ingrassia, Paul.
Engines of change : a history of the American dream
in fifteen cars / Paul Ingrassia.
p. cm.
1. AutomobilesUnited StatesHistory. 2. Automobiles
Social aspectsUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.
TL23.I54 2012
629.2220973dc23

2012002303

ISBN 978-1-4516-4063-2
ISBN 978-1-4516-4065-6 (ebook)

For Charlie

In the 1990s Chrysler executives used to joke that they could tell a Jeep driver from a minivan driver just by looking at his or her watch. Timex watches were for practical people, those utterly unconcerned about putting up appearances and thus unworried about driving a mommy-mobile. Even if they were mommies.

But Rolexes signaled people whose self-image couldnt cope with a minivan and who wanted to flaunt their rugged, outdoor lifestyle. Even if ruggedness only meant hitting potholes en route to the mall in their Jeep Grand Cherokee Orvis Edition. With a skinny Venti Latte in the cup holder, of course.

For decades, the connection between cars and self-image has been understood and appreciated by prominent philosophers. Consider the Beach Boys. Their song Fun, Fun, Fun (1964) wasnt so much about the Ford Thunderbird as about the free-spirited teenaged girl who drove one.