Automobile Heritage and Tourism

Michael V. Conlin, Lee Jolliffe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781032339764
• eBook ISBN: 9781315436197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Automobile heritage encompasses a complex range of artefacts and activities. Beyond just historic vehicles which are the primary artefacts of this niche, it also includes communities of collectors and enthusiasts, private owners and public institutions, as well as historic motoring environments, literally thousands of museums, exhibitions and car shows throughout the world, and a range of paraphernalia that includes both original and replicated promotional materials, equipment and parts, and guide books. Although automobile heritage has been the subject of some limited research, Automobile Heritage and Tourism is unique in examining its scope and role within tourism. The book looks at a vast array of topics, from the experience of using and collecting old cars, related destination development, automobile heritage and museums, to events such as vintage automobile racing, promotion and social change. It thereby provides a thorough review of the impacts of automobile heritage on tourism. A number of theories provide a framework and are analysed throughout, including those related to the collection, display, exhibition and use of historic automobiles. The title takes a global and interdisciplinary view of the subject with international contributions from both established and emerging scholars in the field.This book adds to the industrial heritage tourism literature and will appeal to a diverse audience, in particular those in the fields of cultural heritage and industrial heritage tourism, but also practitioners involved with the planning, restoration, exhibition and management of automobile heritage attractions and events.

Part I

Introduction

1Automobile heritage and tourism

A framework for study

Michael V. Conlin and Lee Jolliffe

Introduction

Cars are always something I’ve loved.

Ralph Lauren (Autoweek, March 9, 2008)

It would be hard to imagine growing up in the twentieth century without developing at least a passing interest in automobiles. For the past one hundred years, they have been a ubiquitous part of all developed and developing economies around the world (Eckermann, 2001). Since World War Two, with the growth of transportation infrastructure and the growth of the developed economies’ middle class, they have become even more a part of our societies. Their pervasiveness and relevance to life in developed and developing countries have achieved virtual iconic status. They are an integral part of our lives and notwithstanding predictions of the decline of the automobile, their role in the development of our economic, social and cultural milieu cannot be denied (Sachs, 1992).

For the generations beginning with the so-called ‘baby boomers’ or those people born immediately after World War Two, memories of childhood have inevitably been inter-twined with aspirations about automobile ownership, and the subsequent experience of owning a car, driving it, caring for it, possibly modifying it, maybe racing it, and then selling it for a model even more desirable. Generations of families have developed affiliations with particular automobile manufacturers and more specifically, certain brands. The so-called battle between Chevrolet and Ford, symbolized most clearly in the virtual devotion by many ‘boomers’ and later generations in North America to either the Camaro or the Mustang ‘muscle cars’, is a well understood phenomena (Berger, 2001) The same situation can be seen in Australia where generations of automobile aficionados have sworn their devotion to either Holden or Ford models, and notably to Holden’s Torano and the Ford Falcon GT in the 1970’s and the 1980’s (Conlon and Perkins, 2001). Even in war-ravaged Europe, the rivalry between Germany’s iconic brands, Mercedes and BMW, and the almost slavish devotion of fans to one brand or the other, have fuelled the rise of motor sports and the growing importance of car collecting on that continent (Eckermann, 2001).

This interest in motoring heritage is not confined to the post-World War Two era. The establishment in 1950 of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in the United States mirrored the earlier admiration of automobiles which events such as the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, founded in 1928 in Italy, were based on. However, the practice of rebuilding automobiles and displaying them has now grown from a narrowly defined interest of the wealthy prior to World War Two to what is now a broad-based movement that encompasses concours events, auctions of heritage automobiles, and racing of vintage racing cars (Martin and Clark, 2013).

It is this fascination with automobiles that drives the growing interest in motoring heritage. For many of us, cars are symbols of what we were, what we are, and still for the majority of us, what we want to be seen as in the future. So it seems only natural that our fascination with cars going back to their invention in 1886 by Karl Benz and continuing on through to the present manifests itself in a desire to see, hear, smell, drive, and collect cars (Eckermann, 2001). It is this fascination that is the foundation of motoring heritage.

This volume seeks to explore this interest in motoring heritage, the various activities and behaviours that characterize it, and to analyse their impact on tourism. The sheer scale of these events alone underscores their impact on tourism. Two examples illustrate this scale. The Barrett-Jackson classic car auction held each year since 1972 in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2015 generated revenues of US$130 million in classic car sales and US$6.55 in related automobile memorabilia (Fox Sports, 2015). Although definitive attendance records are not made public, anecdotal estimates suggest that approximately one quarter of a million people visit this one auction alone over the week in which it runs each January. Similarly, the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England also takes place annually. However, unlike the Barrett-Jackson auction, it is a more broad celebration of automobiles and builds upon a rich heritage of automobile racing in the region that first began just before the outbreak of World War Two. From its inaugural narrowly designed format in 1993, the event has become a premier attraction in motoring heritage encompassing vintage racing, concours events, and a range of other activities which celebrate the automobile. It now regularly attracts upwards of 150,000 enthusiasts on each of the three days it runs.

While the Barrett-Jackson auction is possibly the largest of its kind in the world and the Goodwood meeting each year is one of the better known motoring heritage events, car shows, classic car auctions, and historic racing events can be found all around the world, as the chapters in this book illustrate. The pervasiveness of this interest in motoring heritage and the scale of it around the world make it an important aspect of consequential tourism that should be understood and capitalized upon by destinations. It is this phenomenon that this volume will analyse and discuss.

The growth of motoring heritage

The past decade has seen a significant growth in interest by tourism researchers (among others) in the area of heritage tourism (Timothy and Boyd, 2006). This interest has been driven in part by the growing level of importance for tourism by a segment of the tourist population interested in culture, history, and people: in other words, heritage and all it entails. As this desire by a growing number of tourists to have as part of their travelling and leisure experience, an element of learning and enlightenment, destinations have increasingly looked to heritage attractions and events as key elements in sustaining both the social and the financial viability of their offering to the tourism industry.

Consequently, this growth in interest by researchers in heritage as an important element of tourism has spurred, logically, the increasing compartmentalization of the niche including what is known as industrial heritage tourism. This segment of the heritage niche focuses on artefacts, activities, and people involved in the evolution of societies and economies as a direct result of the development of activities and technologies that drove industrial growth since the mid-eighteenth century. Examples of these include activities such as mineral extraction and application to production of products, namely mines, mining support infrastructure, and industrial sites, as well as technologies related to transportation, most notably railways and water transport and latterly, wheeled motorized transportation and aviation.

Several of these industrial heritage areas have become the focus of research by tourism academics and others, most notably mines and mining as well as railways (Conlin and Jolliffe, 2011; Conlin and Bird, 2014). These books and other articles, for example Hospers (2002) and Firth (2011) now form the basis for increasing investigation into the scope of industrial heritage and its role in the growth and sustainability of tourism destinations. This chapter posits that an increased area of attention by researchers will be the wheeled motorized transport area, namely motoring heritage. This area includes examination of automobiles and other forms of wheeled motorized transportation such as motorcycles, buses, trucks and lorries, specialized equipment such as jeeps (Xie, 2006), military wheeled motorized vehicles, and truly specialized vehicles such as the NASA Crawler-Transporter used at Cape Kennedy to move Saturn rockets to their launching pads.

In addition to an examination of wheeled motorized vehicles, research of this area will also include the investigation of the role of infrastructure that supported the growth in use of this form of transportation, including road networks with historical significance, buildings that reflected both the needs of the technology but also the evolving architectural styles of those societies in which the development took place, and the inevitable involvement of people and organizations who took particular pleasure in being associated with this type of technology, namely the motoring enthusiast.

The fascination of motoring heritage

As Ralph Lauren has said about his car collection, ‘Cars were always something I loved’ (Autoweek, 2010). He is not alone in describing the role of cars in our societies and the emotional connection humans have formed for this type of technology. This sense of being with and part of cars is common to many people, particularly in the developed and developing world. One would have had to be born before 1879 to have known a world without cars. In the span of just 145 years, the car has become a truly ubiquitous part of life, especially in industrialized and developed societies. The car and its consequential other forms of motorized wheeled transport – buses, lorries, motorcycles, industrial equipment – have played a continually growing role in all our lives. This centrality may help to explain the fascination many of us have with cars, a captivation that manifests itself in many ways.

It should not be surprising, then, that research into the impact of this fascination with cars and their like should become an important subject for tourism researchers. By their very nature, cars have represented access to mobility (Doolittle, 1916) and enhanced opportunity for travel for an increasing segment of any societies’ population. Inevitably, cars and tourism become linked, both in terms of rationale logistical symmetry but also in terms of individuals’ emotion and fascination. As the subject of this chapter, this fascination increasingly manifests itself with cars from days gone by: in other words, heritage moto...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introduction
• Part II People and automobile heritage
• Part III Places and automobile heritage
• Part IV Products and automobile heritage
• Part V Conclusion
• Index