Automobiles as Entertainment

The American fascination with the automobile made for an easy cultural crossover from reality to entertainment – music, film, television. To be sure, automobile enthusiasts enjoy the appeal of a car or truck to their five senses (yes, even taste), and they’ll spend all day at a hot rod show or watching NASCAR; some will even build their vacations around the Barrett-Jackson auction. The vast majority of the viewing public, however, is not made up of tire-kickers or dipstick-pullers – and may never own a classic automobile in the traditional sense (the VW Thing, for example, will not stack up well next to a Plymouth Barracuda). But cars have been a part of their lives even if they seldom get off the couch.

Driving the Boob Tube

Every kid who spent his or her Saturday mornings parked in front of the TV set was indoctrinated into loving cars because of cartoons like Speed Buggy. Any kid who was allowed to watch TV during prime time remembers whooping and hollering in their living rooms along with the Dukes of Hazzard. Alan West’s Batman would have been rather pedestrian without the Batmobile. It goes back further; before there was ever a Herman Munster, there was Car 54. Even the Andy Griffith Show featured regular cameos by the old “squad car”, which (like everything else on TV at the time) was a black-and-white.

Matinee Idle

The automobile’s photogenic streak transferred easily to the silver screen. It didn’t hurt that real-life anti-heroes like Clyde Barrow were so openly fond of their getaway cars; the classic car chase scene has been a staple of action films from Bullitt to the French Connection to The Italian Job. Modern hot rods lit up the box office in films like The Fast and the Furious (or, don’t smirk, Cannonball Run). The kids today love digitally animated Cars, just as the previous generation loved Herbie the Love Bug. Adults laughed at Smokey and the Bandit and watched in horror at Christine. Even the Winnebago got a turn in the spotlight in Escape from Witch Mountain.

Before TV or movies became part of standard American fare, the music industry seized on our love of cars. Sure, Eric Clapton gets off on a ’57 Chevy, but (like Bruce Springsteen’s Cadillac Ranch) his auto-related sounds are part of a foundation that goes back through American Pie and Dead Man’s Curve to Chuck Berry’s Riding Along in My Automobile and Charlie Ryan’s much-covered Hot Rod Lincoln… All of which came way after the legendary Robert Johnson’s Terraplane Blues, recorded in the year 1936