Kicking the Tires: Five Books that Give You the Key to Cars

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5 books

The decision to buy a car has transformed from almost an afterthought to a major financial outlay second only to buying a house. In the past, car buyers made purchases based on emotion and visual cues--be it tail fins, hemi engines, power windows, or chrome bumpers. Today's car buyers are driven by information and technology—as well they should be, since cars last longer, are more reliable, and sport price tags ranging from $25,000 to $70,000. Such fraught decisions can still leave room for consumers to make deals based less on careful research and more on a compulsion to sink into the leather seats of a sleek sports car or climb into the elevated perch of a truck capable of hauling a load of mulch or towing a cabin cruiser. If rational thinking were the main engine fueling car buying, everyone would be buying Toyota Priuses or Honda Accords. The books listed below offer insights into various aspects of automotive design and marketing. Reading these won't help you make a rational car choice, but it might help you understand why your significant other just parked a new Cadillac Escalade in the driveway.

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Car

A Drama of the American Workplace

Mary Walton, 1997

There was a time, not so long ago, that an American-made product was the most popular car in the nation. The 1990-1995 Ford Taurus offered family-friendly space in a sleek, aerodynamic package when the rest of the industry cranked out boxy sedans. Mary Walton was given unprecedented access to the redesign of the next-generation 1996 Taurus and followed the project from inception to showroom. Her book reveals the good intentions behind the choice of every nut, bolt, and dashboard dial and details the ultimate fate of the new design. Along the way she offers incisive portraits of the Ford workers and executives who earnestly attempt to create a groundbreaking product.

Where the Suckers Moon

The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign

Randall Rothenberg, 2013

This is a fascinating and sometimes outrageous dive into the television and print national advertising campaign for Subaru of America at a point in time when the Japanese car company was teetering on the brink of irrelevance. Rothenberg tells the story from two perspectives: the staid Subaru executive team and the hip, iconoclastic Weiden & Kennedy ad agency. The campaign's fate, for those who know cars, is revealed during the pitch meetings, but the ultimate outcome is a hair-pin-turn trip that has you rooting for the Subaru guys while clucking in disapproval at the decisions of the arrogant ad men. The book's tight focus on the mechanics of advertising reveals how one fateful decision (assigning the campaign to a creative director who had little interest in cars) slowly stalled the project before it left the starting line.

The Reckoning

David Halberstam, 2012

David Halberstam's journalism focuses on how corporate decision-making affects history. He has illuminated the failures (and the occasional small victory) of imagination in times of war, in media companies, and in the civil rights movement. Halberstam's focus is narrowed in this book to the history of the Ford Motor Company and Nissan Corp. In a very long (Halberstam could have used a decisive editor) but engrossing account, the book details how the American automotive industry lost focus at a time when the Japanese automakers were taking the lessons they learned in the post-WW II economy to build an automaking juggernaut that overshadowed Ford, GM, and Chrysler. The portrait of the corporate cultures at both automakers give insight on modern consumers' perception of the car market.

Engines of Change

A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars

Paul Ingrassia, 2012

The late Paul Ingrassia, formerly the automotive industry reporter for the Wall Street Journal, profiles fifteen seminal car models that changed how consumers perceived automobiles, which in turn affected the design and marketing of the car market. By reading the "biographies" of the Mustang, the Model T, the Honda Accord, the Jeep, and the Corvair, the reader can see how nostalgia and loyalty drive the often irrational choices car buyers make. Read this "car guide," and you'll understand why your neighbor bought a new Mustang resembling the car Steve McQueen drove in "Bullitt."

Cars

Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything

Stephen Bayley, 2012

Stephen Bayley is the finest writer on design working today and has written on car design throughout his career. This book celebrates 86 of his favorite automotive designs. Through Bayley's analysis, readers can learn how the design of a car reveals both the personality of the person who designed it and the company that manufactured it. Some may argue with his examples, but his critical analysis of each design makes the case for their lasting impact on our consumer memory.