Engines of Change

A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars

Paul Ingrassia

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781451640656
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Technology & Engineering

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.

From 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, America’s history is a vehicular history—an idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prize–winning 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 McNamara’s unlikely role in Lee Iacocca’s Mustang, John Z. DeLorean’s Pontiac GTO , Henry Ford’s Model T, as well as Honda’s 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 car’s 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Description
• About Paul Ingrassia
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: When Henry Met Sallie: Car Wars and Culture Clashes at the Dawn of America’s Automotive Age
• Chapter 2: Zora, Zora, Zora: A Bolshevik Boy Escapes the Nazis and Saves the Great American Sports Car
• Chapter 3: The 1959 Cadillacs: Style, Status, and the Race for the Biggest Tail Fins Ever
• Chapter 4: Volkswagen’s Beetle and Microbus: The Long and Winding Road from Hitler to the Hippies
• Chapter 5: The Chevy Corvair Makes Ralph Nader Famous, Lawyers Ubiquitous, and (Eventually) George W. Bush President of the United States
• Chapter 6: Turning a “Librarian” into a “Sexpot”: The Youth Boom, the Sixties, and the Making of the Mustang
• Chapter 7: The Brief But Glorious Reign of John Z. DeLorean and the Pontiac GTO
• Chapter 8: Ohio Gozaimasu: Godzilla, Mr. Thunder, and How a Little Japanese Car Became America’s Big Ichiban
• Chapter 9: The Chrysler Minivans: Baby Boomers Become Soccer Moms and a, um, Driving Force in American Politics
• Chapter 10: The BMW 3 Series: The Rise of the Yuppies and the Road to Arugula
• Chapter 11: The Jeep: From War to Suburbia, or How to Look Like You’re Going Rock Climbing When You’re Really Going to Nordstrom
• Chapter 12: The Ford F-Series: Cowboys, Country Music, and Red-Meat Wheels for Red-State Americans
• Chapter 13: An Innovative Car (the Prius), Its Insufferable Drivers (the Pious), and the Advent of a New Era
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Photographs