The Painful Change to Thinking Small
Not many love affairs have maintained as high a level of passion over decades as the romance between Americans and their huge, gleaming cars. Like all long affairs, it has had its ups and downs, even periods of disenchantment, but it has always held together. More than any other purchased object, more even than other complex machines, the family car historically has been a symbol of status, power and freedom. For many citizens, few other experiences could match the exhilaration of rolling down the highway at 65 m.p.h.; fewer still could top the pride of telling the family that the latest raise would permit the purchase of a still bigger car, with air conditioning. With a car, one could live anywhere, work anywhere, travel anywhere and not have to bother about commuters' tickets or timetables. The car was something to plunge into debt for, boastfully display to friends and neighbors, anxiously take for a checkup whenever it began to cough.
To some, the affair might seem a bit ridiculous, but it was strong enough to survive many storms. Social critics might, and regularly did damn the high-powered car as a strangler of cities, fouler of the air and catalyst of a blighted landscape of junkyards, filling stations and hotdog stands. Foreigners might tempt with siren songs of durability and economy, and lure no small number of Americans into dalliance with a Volkswagen or Toyota. Even the average driver in the last decade or so might grumble at his beloved during a traffic jam or on the day that the insurance premium came due; he might actually feel a bit shamed when comparing notes with a sports-car fanatic. But he always --or nearly always--remained loyal to that sleek machine in the showroom.
Second Look. Lately, though, there have been multiplying signs that the long American romance with the big car may finally be ending. It has always been an expensive affair and even before the energy crisis, many drivers had concluded that the cost--in initial price, depreciation, repair bills--could no longer be borne. Over the past few years, unprecedented numbers of Americans have been buying smaller, cheaper autos. Now the energy crisis has focused on the U.S. car, which consumes 28% of the nation's petroleum; gasoline shortages are forcing multitudes more to take a second look at their prized possession, not as status symbol or love object but purely as a means of transportation.
What they are seeing is a two-ton, eight-cylinder behemoth built for an age when 50-m.p.h. speed limits, gasless Sundays and talk of rationing would have seemed like blasphemies. The result is that even more motorists are turning to smaller vehicles that can get them through the oil squeeze--at the likely cost of wrenching readjustments in the auto industry, the U.S. economy and the way that citizens move, live and think.
Those readjustments come closer with every week. Last week Federal Energy Czar William Simon asked gas stations to limit sales to ten gallons per customer per visit, and announced that he would make that an order once he receives legislative authority. For the moment, drivers are free to visit a string of gas stations, buying ten gallons at each one--if they can find enough open. But Simon also asked motorists to try to get along all week on ten gallons, a quantity barely sufficient to propel the average standard-size car 110 miles through urban traffic.
Cold Consolation. That amounts to a call for voluntary rationing, and it could be at least a temporary substitute for formal, coupon-type rationing. Simon promises to announce a decision on outright rationing by New Year's; the strong indications now are that it will be no. Some energy bureaucrats say that voluntary conservation measures are expected to save 2.7 million bbl. of oil per day in the first quarter of 1974, and that U.S. imports of oil are running 700,000 bbl. per day higher than expected, indicating some leaks in the Arab oil embargo. Thus the gap between oil supply and demand in the next three months may be much less than the 3.3 million bbl. per day originally feared.
That, however, is cold consolation for motorists; whether rationing is voluntary or mandatory, the nation will still have to cut back sharply on the 6.7 million bbl. of gasoline that its 117 million cars, trucks and buses swallow each day.
Even if the Arab embargo were lifted altogether and U.S. refineries could get all the crude oil they need, they lack the capacity to turn out enough gas to keep consumption rising at its normal voracious rate. Simon already has asked refineries to cut gasoline production next year 5% below 1972 levels--or 15% below expected demand--in order to free more capacity for output of heating oil. The reductions may force some gasoline stations to limit each sale to even less than Simon's ten gallons.
As it gets scarcer, gasoline is bound to become still more expensive. By Nov. 30, the national average price of gasoline at the pump, including taxes, had already leaped to about 43-c- per gal., from 37-c- in January. Last week the Cost of Living Council permitted a boost in U.S. crude oil prices that will add another 2.3-c- per gal. on both gasoline and heating oil. Arab and other producing nations are now huddling to decide on further boosts in the foreign oil price, following hikes of 70% or so imposed at the beginning of the boycott, and Washington is still talking of raising taxes in order to discourage gasoline use. About the lowest figure at which economists predict that the pump price of gasoline is likely to settle is 60-c-; other guesses range up to 80-c-, $1 and higher.
Heavy Loser. That climate of scarcity and skyrocketing gasoline prices is ominous news for what auto executives like to call the "full-size" auto. For years, the family car has been moving away from economy; the typical 1974 General Motors passenger sedan (Chevrolet Impala, Oldsmobile 88 or 98, the average Buick) gets only about 10.5 miles to a gallon of gasoline in city driving, down from 13.7 m.p.g. in 1968, a performance not too different from industry averages (see chart page 22). The main reason has been added weight and luxury. The average full-size U.S.-made sedan now weighs more than 4,000 Ibs., up 22% since 1965 and more than half a ton heavier than its European or Japanese equivalent.
Actually, people probably are more worried about not being able to get gasoline than about what they might have to pay for it. Fuel is not a car owner's biggest expense; depreciation is. Still, if prices hit 60-c- a gal., then a motorist who drives 15,000 miles a year in a car that gets 10 miles to the gallon would pay $900 annually for fuel; if he were to trade in that car for a subcompact that gets 20 m.p.g., his gas bill would be halved. The $450 difference could influence at least some more new-car buyers to opt for smaller autos.
Auto executives argue with justification that they have had to reduce gas mileage to comply with federal safety and antipollution standards. Modifications to auto engines since 1970 to meet the requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency have indeed cost an average of 3 m.p.g. But added luxury features have been equally important. Air conditioning, which now goes into 73% of all cars, drains off as much as 2.5 m.p.g.; power steering, put into 88% of U.S. autos, can cost another 0.7 m.p.g. The combination of these features and antipollution equipment has been more than enough to cancel any improvements in engine efficiency.
Detroit insists that it has been adding the high-profit accessories to meet public demand--and that has indeed been true for some time. But the energy crisis is radically altering the popular mood. Politicians, ever sensitive to public attitudes, have recently been falling all over one another to swap their long limousines for more modest cars: Delaware Governor Russell W. Peterson is exchanging his chauffeur-driven limousine for a chauffeur-driven Ford Pinto. Some legislators have gone so far as to attempt direct action against the big car. Early this month, the Senate voted to require that by 1984 all U.S. automakers increase fuel economy by an average of 50% or more over 1974 models--a move that would surely force a drastic reduction in size and weight unless some radically more economical engine is developed. A number of other bills before Congress would clamp excise taxes on new cars on the basis of weight or horsepower.
Whether any of these proposals will ever become law is uncertain, but American drivers scarcely need to be ordered to think twice about their bigger cars. In a trend that dismayed Detroit, they had already begun doing so even before the energy crisis struck. In the 1973 model year, compact and subcompact cars captured 41.5% of the domestic new-car market, up from 38% the year before and 32% in 1970--before the first Vegas, Pintos and Colts appeared. Last month, sales of smaller autos, which frequently get around 20 m.p.g., were up 10% over the same period in 1972, while sales of standard-size cars (roughly, anything larger than a Dodge Dart and smaller than a Cadillac) fell 25%. That trend continued in the first ten days of December. Foreign cars, many of which are as small as U.S. subcompacts and get equally good gas mileage, have captured 15% of the American market and held that share despite dollar devaluations that have raised their price above those of some competing U.S. small cars. Sales of new Cadillacs and other luxury cars have held strong, presumably because their buyers do not worry about fuel costs, but prices on used-car lots are dropping.
For dealers caught with large inventories of gas guzzlers, the abrupt change in the market has produced some bad moments. TIME Correspondent David DeVoss, who recently spent two days at Los Angeles' Cal Worthington Dodge, one of the largest Dodge dealerships in the nation, found the atmosphere reminiscent of halftime in the locker room of a losing football team. Of the 1,200 vehicles sitting on Worthington's nine-acre lot, only nine were compact Colts; the rest included gasoline-thirsty Monacos, Barracudas, Chargers and Furys.
At a Saturday-morning sales meeting, salesmen disconsolately kicked the floor or coughed nervously as the owner delivered a classic pep talk.
"Men," shouted Worthington, "you all know what we're up against! A subcompact gets 20 m.p.g. against 10 m.p.g. for a standard-size car, but we got to convince 'em that a standard's just as good. Throw some figures at 'em. Tell them that they're three times as likely to be injured in an accident if they're driving a subcompact.* Wait a little bit, and then say that with big-car prices down so much, they'd be foolish to sit cramped up in a small car ready to die ... Men, go out there and sell those big cars!"
The fiery speech did about as much good as halftime pep talks usually do; despite free Green Stamps, and cut-price kits allowing customers to convert their cars to burn propane gas, Worthington's Dodge Boys sold only ten cars that day v. forty on a normal Saturday.
Many automen hope, of course, that the current move toward small size and fuel economy is a passing fancy. "People like big cars," says GM Chairman Richard Gerstenberg. "The bulk of the people who buy a car want comfort and convenience, and they are willing to pay for it." The history of the U.S. consumer lends that view considerable merit --but a continuing energy crisis could change the taste of many buyers who might otherwise prefer a larger car. The automakers are acting as if that might happen; they are converting to small-car production as fast as they can. GM last week temporarily closed 16 big-car assembly plants and laid off 137,000 workers; meanwhile it is expanding production of subcompact Vegas by 40% in the 1974 model year. Chrysler Corp, is temporarily closing three of its big-car factories next month, and converting one from production of standard-size Plymouth Furys and Dodge Monacos to compact Valiants and Darts. American Motors, the smallest of the carmakers, has been prepared for the change all along: it has concentrated on production of little Hornets and Gremlins. AMC sales are running 27% ahead of last year, and executives say that only a shortage of parts prevents them from pushing sales gains still higher.
First Ripple. Even those auto executives wedded to the idea of luxury are learning to think small. At Ford Motor Co., Vice President Lee Iacocca scored a personal triumph in 1965 with the Mustang, a car that was 181.6 in. long and weighed 2,567 Ibs. Over the years, the Mustang gained 12 in. and 653 Ibs. For the 1974 model year, lacocca, now Ford Motor president, is placing the company's bets heavily on the Mustang II, a car about the size of his original Mustang and listing at $2,895. Luxury features make it difficult to find an actual Mustang that sells for much under $4,000, but even with the extras the car is supposed to deliver 20 m.p.g. lacocca asserts that the Mustang II is the first ripple in the wave of the future: the "luxury small car."
In the suburban research campuses that ring Detroit, auto engineers are working overtime on designs for even smaller models. Next year, American Motors will probably bring out a new mini-car that may be smaller than any existing U.S.-made auto, get more than 30 m.p.g. and carry a sticker price of about $2,000. Even Cadillac is working on a Mercedes-size luxury car that would get better gas mileage than any of the division's existing models.
Most such changes take considerable time. The gap between clay model and assembly line can be as long as three years. The earliest that any design change made this week could turn up on the showroom floor is 1976; a completely new car could not appear until 1978 or 1979. Meanwhile there is a considerable difference of opinion about where the auto industry is headed. "I think there will be further growth of the smaller car, but I can't see it taking over the market," says GM Chairman Gerstenberg. "We think that in the next three or four years, small cars' share of the market will go up to a little beyond 50%." However, some Wall Street automotive analysts guess that the figure may rise to as much as 60% or 70%.
Whoever is right, small cars are inherently less profitable than the big jobs, largely because they take about as many high-cost man-hours of work to produce but return a smaller selling price.
That means that even if automakers next year equal this year's record 11.2 million assemblies, total revenues and profits will be lower. If, as many outside analysts expect, the total drops to about 10 million cars, the reduction could be sharp. In anticipation of that drop, Wall Streeters have bid down the prices of car companies' stocks. General Motors shares this month have sold at an eleven-year low of less than $45, down from a 1973 high of almost $85.
Seventh Worker. Lower auto output and smaller cars would mean reduced sales and fewer jobs in a host of other industries. Automakers consume 8% of the aluminum made in the U.S., 16% of the steel, 29% of the tin, 36% of the glass, 41% of the malleable iron and 73% of the rubber. One out of every seven workers in the country is employed in the manufacture, sale or maintenance of autos, or in thousands of auto-dependent businesses, from motor oil to motels. More than a tenth of the gross national product is spent by individuals to purchase, fuel, maintain, park, clean or insure autos or to build roads for them.
The changes in popular thought and action that the auto has brought are harder to measure but even more profound than the impact of the industry on the economy. When Charles and Frank Duryea rigged a one-cylinder gasoline engine on a $70 secondhand carriage in 1893, the car began life as a simple means of getting from Point A to Point B. Right from the start there were warnings of trouble. In 1895, when there were only four gasoline-powered vehicles in the country, two of them managed to collide in St. Louis, injuring both drivers. That crash was the ancestor of the traffic accidents that today take 60,000 American lives a year (a rate that seems to be dropping with the advent of gasless Sundays, one of the good effects of the energy crisis).
Yet almost from the beginning the car seized the popular imagination as a symbol of speed, power and luxury. In 1908, the year that Henry Ford launched the auto age in earnest by rolling out the first Model T, Kenneth Grahame in The Wind in the Willows was already describing the auto frenzy. Toad, bowled over by a car whose horn went "Poop-poop," picks himself up and soliloquizes: "All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even dreamt! But now--but now that I know, now that I fully realize! O, what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What dust-clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way..." At intervals thereafter, Toad takes to murmuring "Poop-poop."
A few years later, the whole country began going "Poop-poop." Auto production in the U.S. soared from 124,000 in 1909 to 1,500,000 in 1916, and by 1925 there were 17 million cars on the road. Those were golden years for the motorcar, with as many as 150 companies turning out a rich proliferation of broughams, phaetons, roadsters and touring cars. The number of manufacturers dwindled to just four in the 1960s, but the number of cars multiplied; under the pressure to look newer, more luxurious and more comfortable every fall, they began turning into what Writer John Keats was later to describe as the "insolent chariots." Bodies grew longer and lower, headlights doubled, sculptured trunk decks sprouted monstrous tail fins. Bucket seats were reimported from Europe, steering wheels were redesigned to keep from impaling drivers in crashes -- and gas mileage dropped.
Eventually, says Cultural Historian James Funk, "the auto replaced the frontier as the shaping force for all our American institutions and values." People gained unprecedented geographic and social mobility; the Okies, for example, could not have left the Dust Bowl for the promised land of California in the 1930s without their jalopies. Suburbs sprawled into formerly unreachable open land as the newly mobile middle class fled the cities, leaving behind a huddle of poor. A whole drive-in economy of motels, movie theaters, groceries, banks and hamburger stands sprang up. From the bank to the courthouse, every institution was radically changed.
Autos today account for 30% of all consumer debt, and auto-related cases -- traffic offenses, civil damage suits, drunken driving raps and the like -- constitute an estimated 57% of the cases clogging U.S. courts.
Escape Route. For generations of young people, getting a driver's license has become a rite of passage into adult hood -- and an escape route from the clutches of family and community. To day, millions of drivers have become emotionally and physically so dependent on driving that getting unhooked will be super-painful. Don Kelley, a 33-year-old show business agent in Los Angeles, on one recent day spent three of his nine working hours driving his Cadillac 232 miles -- from home to office and then to a booking agency, to an airport to pick up a rock band, to their hotel to drop them off,-to a barbecue-beef stand for lunch, to a record-company head quarters, to a recording studio, and finally to a cocktail party. Tooling home after all that, Kelley mused: "I guess I could do more business on the phone, but I'm in a business that is too phone-oriented already. It's the people who make the personal contacts who are the ones remembered. Car pools leave me cold. If I have to ride in one I will, but I'll keep a small car at the office."
For many Americans, doing without a car--or even using it less--would mean economic hardship. Tony Garner, a 32-year-old manufacturers' representative in Martin's Landing, Ga., put some 32,000 miles in business and recreational driving on his 1973 Corvette Sting Ray, which gets about 11 m.p.g. His family lives three miles from the nearest bus stop and five miles from the nearest grocery store, so relying on public transportation would be difficult. Tony's customers are spread all over the state, and he fears that gasoline rationing would cut his annual income in half.
"I'd have to get a Volkswagen to save my job," he says. "I'd stay out longer on each trip instead of coming home at night. And we'd have to give up some luxuries, like the kids' dance lessons."
No Drive, No Eat. Like many a suburban mother, Sue Fisher, who lives near Miami, pushes her Ford LTD station wagon about 400 miles a week--delivering her three children to school, picking them up again, visiting a bank, post office, supermarket and the home of her ailing mother. That's on weekdays; on Saturdays she chauffeurs her two sons to an art class at the University of Miami, takes one to a weekly orthodontist appointment and drives her daughter to dancing lessons. "I'm trying to conserve energy by saving trips," says Mrs. Fisher, "but the fuel shortage is going to affect us drastically." Ellen Jackson, an Oakton, Va., housewife, sees no alternative to the car. "It's two miles to the nearest store," she says, "and there is no public transportation of any kind. If I don't drive, my family doesn't eat."
Whole communities are utterly dependent on the auto. Wall, S. Dak., a town of 800, boasts four ultramodern motels, three new gas stations, a bevy of postcard stands, a famous drugstore that does more than $1,000,000 worth of business annually and the highest per capita ownership of backyard swimming pools in the state--all because it happens to be handy to the interstate highway that vacationers travel to the Badlands, the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Now a local construction firm has postponed building a $300,000, 46-unit motel, and Herb Pantke, 63-year-old attendant at one of the gas stations, has become the first person in town to lose his job because of the energy crisis; the station had to close up this month because it could find no gas to sell. Wall residents are beginning to worry and wonder whether their community will go the way of nearby Quinn, which was a twin hamlet in the 1950s but has turned into a virtual ghost town because it is well removed from the highway.
Not all Americans will be driving less. In the Los Angeles area, where cars outnumber people two-to-one, there is virtually no alternative to the private auto, and any rationing scheme should take that dependence into account. Millions of Americans will gladly pay top dollar for gasoline, as long as they can still get it. Western Europe has proved that even $1-a-gal. gasoline need not curtail car sales so long as the cars are small and economical enough. The number of cars owned by each 1,000 Italians multiplied from 18 in 1955 to 188 in 1970. In the U.S., once the initial shock of the gasoline shortage is over and Detroit has completed its conversion to smaller cars (there will always be a limited market for larger cars), motorists may well drive as many miles as the one trillion they logged in 1972, while still significantly reducing total gasoline consumption.
But Americans will obviously have to make much greater changes in their car buying and using habits. The gasoline-short future is exceptionally difficult to read, partly because Detroit has only begun to prepare for it, but some forecasts seem safe enough:
>Multiple-car ownership could spread beyond the one-third of American families that already own two or more vehicles, but the pattern will be different. "The more variety you have in small cars, the more people who have one car will want two," says GM's Gerstenberg. A small, unostentatious car will be the workhorse for commuting and shopping. The second vehicle could be any of a number of special-purpose types, depending on family habits and interests: a camper for vacations, a pickup truck for light hauling, a sports car for pleasure driving--perhaps even a large sedan for limited use. Some families may own a small car and rent a large one whenever they have to travel somewhere together. Joseph M. Pepek, a dentist in Westfield, Mass., may represent the two-car future: last month he traded his big Buick Electra Limited for a smaller Buick Century and a tiny Japanese-made Subaru. "I use the Subaru to go to work," he says, "and the Buick for going to church or stepping out on Saturday night--you know, ceremonial occasions."
>Car pooling will have to increase, despite massive psychological resistance to it. Many drivers cherish their hour of splendid isolation in the car as about the only time all day that they are alone to think out plans, muse philosophically or scream out their frustrations free from embarrassment. But the one-occupant-per-car habit is simply too expensive to be continued. Already, radio station WTOP in Washington broadcasts ads for car-pool organizers. The Federal Government, on William Simon's orders, is assigning parking space in lots on the basis of the number of car occupants rather than their rank--the more passengers, the choicer the location. Car pooling will not sweep the country overnight. At least 56% of all cars on the road every day carry only one occupant. But even a minor reduction in their number would produce considerable energy savings.
>The inexorable advance of highways into the countryside will slow, and cars may even be banned in some places. The Highway Trust Fund, which has disbursed some $58 billion over the past two decades, was tapped by Congress for mass transit money this year for the first time. If gasoline remains scarce, states that depend on fuel taxes to fund local highway construction may end up with less money than projected; some planned highways may never be built. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed banning cars from certain downtown business districts by 1977; many city dwellers, including not a few local businessmen, are in favor of the idea. "You are not going to control this nation in the form of a police state where you have to have a passport to cross the state line," says AMC Chairman Roy Chapin. "But there definitely will be restrictions on passenger-vehicle access to certain areas of major cities. That's something I think is both feasible and proper."
> Public transportation will experience a revival, but perhaps not in the form that many people expect. Most discussion has focused on improving mass transit, such as subways and commuter rail lines. Auto executives argue that that is only a small part of the answer; the public-transportation future, in their view, belongs to the bus. "Where the hell is a better transit system for a city of 200,000 than a first-class bus system?"asks GM's Gerstenberg. The car manufacturers' self-interest is obvious--they are the big busmakers--but they have some convincing statistics. The auto has brought about such a gigantic demographic dispersion that only rubber wheels can effectively tie a metropolitan area together.
The popular picture of the commuter is of a man wending his way daily from bedroom suburb to city office. But in the ten largest metropolitan areas outside New York City, only 18% of the daily traffic moves that way; fully half of the commuters travel from suburban home to suburban job. (About 25% both live and work in the city, and 7% reverse-commute from the city to the suburbs.) As many suburbanites know, that pattern has produced traffic snarls, at intersections dozens of miles outside the core city, that rival anything encountered on downtown streets. Says Ford Motor Chairman Henry Ford II: "Subways are fine for getting downtown and back, but most people don't travel downtown and back any more. They travel all over the place. And you can't build subways all over the place."
Buses cannot roam all over the place either, but they can reach many more points than a rail system can, and Detroit is now moving to upgrade bus transportation. GM, the nation's largest maker of city buses, is spending $32 million redesigning theirs to provide more comfortable seats, a smoother suspension, wider doors and better visibility for both driver and passengers. Chrysler and American Motors both have Government contracts to develop new buses.
One possibility is computer-controlled, driverless buses running along expressway lanes reserved exclusively for them. Another is "dial-a-bus" systems. These would employ small vehicles that would run frequently along fixed routes but have no set stopping points; a passenger would simply dial a central office and the next bus would stop at his corner to pick him up. Of course, the best answer to urban transportation problems will be a mix of buses and rail-based systems.
Some other changes, technical and sociological, can at least be imagined for the small-car, gasoline-short future. The car of the next decade may be more tubular-shaped to reduce wind drag, a prime factor in fuel economy, and come equipped with fuel-injection, which measures out the right amount of fuel needed for more complete combustion.
Smoother-rolling radial tires could become universal. Cars may be made almost entirely of plastic to cut body weight--though not if the oil shortage continues to reduce the supply of petrochemical feedstocks from which plastics are made. Autos will almost surely be shorter in front and rear and roomier inside. They will probably be more expensive but possibly built to last longer; annual model changes are already becoming less pronounced, and the public is likely to be more impressed with quality construction than frequent cosmetic restyling. Says AMC's Chapin: "I think we're headed toward smaller, more efficient automobiles, including cars that perform specific functions better. By that, I'm thinking of cars particularly suited to our urban life, more resistant to the abuses that a car gets in traffic and parking."
Socially, there could be a movement of middle-class whites back to the city, where they can get away from auto dependence. Suburban sprawl could be correspondingly contained. At minimum, businesses would have to plan factory and office locations differently; no longer could a company plop a plant or office complex in an area without public transportation, blithely confident that a work force would roll up to its doors in a fleet of cars.
Where does all that leave the classic, distinctively American, roomy, powerful, glittering family car? In a state of suspended animation. No one can yet write its obituary: millions still roam the roads, and millions more will roll off assembly lines this year, even though they have become harder to sell. A resurgence cannot be ruled out either. City planners, traffic experts, sociologists and environmentalists may rejoice in the big car's difficulties. But surely the majority of drivers who are turning away from it are doing so more in sorrow than in anger, and would gladly turn back if costs permitted.
The prospects for such a renaissance do not seem strong, though; economists generally are agreed that the era of readily abundant fuel has ended for good.
More likely, the heavy car will linger as a limited-purpose, special-use auto, but not again become the basic American vehicle. If so, many drivers will feel the emptiness that always accompanies the final breakup of a lingering love affair.
It is possible to delight in the economy and maneuverability of small cars; it is even possible to grow fond of them. It is harder to regard them as badges of wealth or symbols of potency. The big car was part of the American Dream --not the most intelligent or admirable part, perhaps, but certainly a central one --and not much is in sight to replace it in that role.
*True, according to a study by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.
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