1950s American car culture has had a lasting influence on US culture, as reflected in popular music, the main trends of the 1950s and the mainstream acceptance of "hot rod" culture. The American manufacturing economy shifted from producing war-related goods to consumer goods at the end of World War II, and by the late 1950s, one in six American workers was employed both directly and indirectly in the automotive industry. The United States became the world's largest carmaker, and Henry Ford's goal 30 years earlier - that everyone with a good job should be able to afford a car - is reached. A new generation of customer-focused service businesses with their cars have sprung up over the past decade, including drive-through or drive-in restaurants and more drive-in (cinema) cinemas.
This decade began with 25 million registered cars on the road, most of which were before World War II and in adverse conditions; no cars or parts were produced during the war because of allotment and restrictions. By 1950, most manufacturers had made the transition to a consumer-based economy, and more than 8 million cars were produced that year alone. In 1958, there were more than 67 million registered cars in the United States, more than twice the number at the beginning of the decade.
As part of the U.S. national defense, to support military transportation, the National Highway System was expanded by the Interstate highway, which began in 1955, in many parts of the United States. Larger multi-lane highways allow traffic to move at a faster pace, with little or no traffic lights on the road. The wide open space along the highway becomes the base for many billboards showing advertisements.
The dawn of Space Age and Space Race is reflected in the contemporary American automotive style. Big tails, flowing designs that are reminiscent of rockets, and radio antennas mimicking Sputnik 1 are common, thanks to pioneering design efforts such as Harley Earl.
Video 1950s American automobile culture
Interstate Overpass System
The Defensive Interstate and Defense National Defense System Dwight D. Eisenhower (commonly called the Interstate or Interstate system) is a highway network that forms part of the National Highway System of the United States. While serving as Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower has gained appreciation from the German Autobahn network as an important component of the national defense system, providing transportation routes for military supplies and troop deployment. Construction was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the original part was completed 35 years later. This system has contributed in shaping the United States into the world's superpower economies and highly developed countries.
Interstates are growing rapidly, along with the auto industry, allowing new mobility to be found that permeates American way of life and culture. Cars and Interstates symbolize individuality and American freedom, and, for the first time, car buyers accept that the cars they drive show their social standing and their level of prosperity. It becomes a statement of their personality and the extension of their self-concept.
Maps 1950s American automobile culture
Suburbanization
US investments in infrastructure such as roads and bridges coincide with the increasing availability of better-suited cars with higher speeds allowing for better roads, allowing people to live beyond the borders of large cities, rather than commuting to and from workplace.
After World War II, land developers began buying land outside the city limits of large cities to build large numbers of inexpensive homes. One of the first examples of planned suburbanization is Levittown, Pennsylvania, developed by William Levitt which began in 1951 as a suburb of Philadelphia. Promise their own single-family home on their own land, along with free college education and low-interest loans given to returnees to buy houses under G.I. Bill, pushing demand for new homes to an unprecedented level. In addition, 4 million babies are born each year during the 1950s. By the end of the baby boom era in 1964, nearly 77 million "baby boomers" had been born, pushing the need for suburban housing, and cars to commute to and from the city center to work and shop.
In the late 1950s, one-third of Americans lived in the suburbs. Eleven of the twelve largest cities in the United States recorded a declining population over the decade, with consequent loss of tax revenues and urban culture. Only Los Angeles, the cultural center of the car, gained the population. Economist Richard Porter commented that "The car makes suburban possibilities, and the suburbs make the car important."
Decreased inner city
More people joined the middle class in the 1950s, with more money to spend, and the availability of consumer goods expanded along with the economy, including cars. Americans spend more time in their cars and see them as an extension of their identity, which helps drive an explosion in car sales. Most of the direct or indirect business associated with the automotive industry saw tremendous growth over the decade. New designs and innovations appeal to generations who love fashion and glamor, and the newfound freedom and way of life in the suburbs have some unexpected consequences for inner cities. The 1950s saw early white and urban sprawl flights, driven by increased car ownership. Many local and national transport legislation encourage suburbanization, which ultimately ends in destroying cities economically.
As more and more middle-class and prosperous people are leaving the city to relatively quiet and open spaces in the suburbs, the urban centers get worse and lose the population. At the same time that cities experience a lower tax base due to flights from higher earners, pressure from The New Deal forces them to offer pensions and other benefits, increasing the average cost per employee benefit by 1.629 percent. This is in addition to employing an average of 20% more employees to serve the shrinking cities. More Americans drive cars and use less public transport, and it's not practical to extend to the suburbs. At the same time, the number of surface roads exploded to serve a continuous increase in the number of cars owned, increasingly burdening the city and state resources. During this time, the perception of using public transportation becomes more negative. In what is arguably the most extreme example, Detroit, the fifth largest city in the United States in 1950 with 1,849,568 residents, has shrunk to 706,585 in 2010, a 62 percent reduction.
In some cases, the automotive and other industries are directly responsible for the decline in public transport. The Great American streetcar scandal saw GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and other companies purchased tram and electric trains in the 1930s and 1940s, so 90 percent of the city's trolleys had been dismantled in 1950 Considered that this is a deliberate destruction of street trams as part of a larger strategy to push the United States into car dependence. In United States v. National City Lines, Inc. , many are found guilty of antitrust violations. Stories have been explored several times in print, movies and more, for example in Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Captured for Riding and Little City Edge .
Women's rights
Car unions play a major role in promoting the cause of women's rights. In 1955, the United Automatic Workers Union (UAW) organized the UAW Women's Department to strengthen the role of women in unions and encourage participation in union selected bodies. In a move greeted with some hostility by Teamsters leaders, the US Personnel Transportation Division in 1943 instructed Workers Union officials that women should be allowed full employment as truck drivers. It proved to be only a temporary measure in wartime, but the change of hearts among Teamsters leadership in the mid-1950s led to the 1963 Equivalent Payment Act. Women in the automotive industry were regarded as leaders in the movement for women's rights.
Motorports
Hot rodding
The increasing popularity of hot rodding cars (modifying them to improve performance) is reflected in part by the creation of special interest magazines that serve this culture. Hot Rod is the oldest magazine, with the first editor of Wally Parks, and was founded by Robert E. Petersen in 1948, with original publication by Petersen Publishing Company. Hot Rod has an affiliate licensed with Universal Technical Institute.
The relative abundance and inexpensive nature of Ford Model T and other cars from the 1920s through the 1940s helped fuel the burgeoning hot rod culture, which focused on gaining the most linear velocity of these older cars. The origin of the term "hot rod" is unclear, but culture evolved in the post-war culture of the 1950s.
Hot Rod cover of November 1950 magazine announced its first hot rod exceeds 200 mph. This handmade car uses Mercury Flathead V8 made by Edelbrock and set a record at Bonneville Salt Flats. This area of ​​30,000 acres (47Ã, sqÃ, mi) has been called the "Holy Grail of American Hot Rodding", and is often used for land speed racing, a tradition that grew rapidly in the 1950s and continues to this day.
Hot rodding is more than just raw power. Custom Kulture began in the 1950s, when artists such as Dutch Von changed the car pin of a rarely used accent that followed the line of cars into a freestyle art form. Dutch von is as famous for his "flying eyeballs" as he has an elaborate design of spider webs. When the decade started, pinning pin designs were almost unheard of, but by 1958 it had become a popular method of adjusting the appearance of hot rods. As the decade progresses, hot rodding becomes a popular hobby for more teenagers when the sport actually comes to Main Street.
Drag race
Drag racing has been around since the first cars, but only in the 1950s it began to become mainstream, starting with Santa Ana Drags, the first drag strip in the United States. The strip was founded by C. J. "Pappy" Hart, Creighton Hunter and Frank Stillwell on the additional runway of Orange County Airport in southern California, and operated from 1950 to 21 June 1959.
Hot Rod editor Wally Parks created the National Hot Rod Association in 1951, and it is still the largest regulatory body in popular sport. As of October 2012, there are at least 139 professional pull strips operating in the United States. One of the most powerful racing fuels ever developed is nitromethane, which dramatically debuted as a racing fuel in the 1950s, and continues as a key component used in Top Fuel drag racing today.
NASCAR
The National Association for Auto Racing Car Shows (NASCAR) is the second most popular sports spectator in the United States behind the National Football League (NFL). It was founded on February 21, 1948, by Bill France, Sr. and built its roots in the 1950s. Two years later in 1950, the first asphalt "superspeedway", the Darlington Speedway, opened in South Carolina, and the sport experienced dramatic growth during the 1950s. Due to the tremendous success of Darlington, the construction begins from a 2.5-mile, high-banked superspeedway near Daytona Beach, which is still in use.
The Cup series began in 1949, with Jim Roper winning the first series. In 2008, the most prestigious race in the series, the Daytona 500 has attracted more than 17 million television viewers. Dynasty was born in the 1950s with racers such as Lee Petty (father of Richard Petty, Kyle Petty's grandfather) and Buck Baker (Buddy Baker's father).
NASCAR, and stock car racing in general, are rooted in the booting process during Prohibition. Junior Johnson was one of the many liquor makers who took part in this sport during the 1950s, which is also famous for his capture in 1955 for operating his father's liquor still as for the success of his racing. He ended up spending a year in Ohio prison, but soon returned to the sport before retiring as a driver in 1966.
New business model
Faster food
As more and more Americans begin to drive, a completely new business category emerges to enable them to enjoy their products and services without having to leave their car. This includes a drive-in restaurant, and then a drive-through window. Even up to 2010, the chain of restaurants Sonic Drive-In has provided drive-in services primarily by carbo at 3,561 restaurants in 43 US states, serving about 3 million subscribers per day. Known for the use of carhops on roller skates, the company annually runs a competition to determine the top carhop skating system.
A number of other successful "propulsion" businesses took root in the 1950s, including McDonald's (expanded in 1955), which lacked a dining facility, which required customers to park and walk to windows, taking their order "to go". Automation and lack of dining facilities allow McDonald's to sell burgers for 15 cents instead of the typical 35 cents, and people buy them with bags. In 1948, they had fired their craftsmen, installed larger grills, reduced their menu and radically changed the industry by introducing food production assembly methods, similar to the automotive industry, calling it "Speedee Service System". They redesigned their marks specifically to be more easily seen from the road, creating a now known double yellow arch structure. Businessman Ray Kroc joined McDonald's as a franchise agent in 1955. He then bought chains from the McDonald brothers and oversaw its growth worldwide.
Another chain was created to serve an increasingly mobile protector. Carl Karcher opened his first Carl's Jr. in 1956, and grew rapidly, placing his restaurant near a new highway just outside California. These restaurant models initially relied on new and ubiquitous car ownership, and the willingness of the diners to eat in their cars. In 2013, drive-through services account for 65% of their profits.
Drive-in Movies
The drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of large outdoor screen films, projection booths, concession booths, and large parking areas for cars, where customers view movies from the comfort of their cars and listen through electric speakers placed in every parking lot.
Although the first drive-in films appeared in 1933, it was not until after the post-war era that they became popular, enjoying their greatest success in the 1950s, reaching the peak of more than 4,000 theaters in the United States alone. Drive-in cinema has been romantized in popular culture with the movie American Graffiti and Grease and the Happy Days television series . They develop a reputation for showing B movies, usually monsters or horror films, and as a "pit of passion", a place for teens to experiment. While drive-in movies are now less frequent with only 366 remaining and are no longer unique to America, they are still linked as part of American car culture in the 1950s. The drive-in movie has experienced a revival in popularity in the 21st century, partly because of the nostalgia of baby boomers.
Robert Schuller started the first drive-in church in America in 1955 in Garden Grove, California. After the 9:30 am service at the chapel four miles away, he will go to drive-in for the second Sunday service. The worshipers listen to his sermons from the comfort of their cars, using the cinema speaker boxes.
Mal
The first modern shopping center was built in the 1950s, such as the Bergen Mall, which first used the term "mall" to describe the business model. Other early malls moved to a place away from the crowded and commercial city center to the largely populated suburbs. Northgate in Seattle is credited as the first modern mall design, with two lines of business line of sight and paths separating them. Opened in 1950. The Shopper's World in Framingham, Massachusetts, is a two-story mall, and opened a year later. The design was modified again in 1954 when the Northland Center in Detroit, Michigan, used a centralized design with an anchor shop in the middle of a mall, surrounded by other stores. This is the first mall to have a parking lot that actually surrounds the shopping center, and to provide central heating and air conditioning.
In 1956, the Southdale Center opened in Edina, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis. This is the first to combine all these modern elements, which are enclosed in a two-story design, hot and air-conditioning center plus a comfortable common area. It also features two major department stores as an anchor. Most industry professionals regard the Southdale Center as the first modern regional mall.
This formula (enclosed space with installed shops, away from the city center and accessible only by car) is becoming a popular way to build retail around the world. Victor Gruen, one of the pioneers in mall design, deeply resented the influence of his new design; he denounced the creation of an enormous "sea of ​​waste of the sea" and the spread of suburbs.
After sales
The 1950s surge started an aftermarket add-on industry for cars that continues today. The oldest aftermarket wheel company, American Racing, started in 1956 and still builds "mag wheels" (wheels) for almost every car made. Holley introduced the first four barrel modular carburetor, offered by Ford in 1957 Ford Thunderbird, and its version still used by performance fans. Edelbrock began during the Great Depression and spread after the war. They provide various high performance parts for new hot rodders, which are popular equipment for setting speed records at Bonneville Salt Flats. Owners are no longer limited to the original equipment provided by the manufacturer, helping not only create a hot rod culture but also the basis for cosmetic modification. The creation and rapid expansion of the aftermarket allows fans to personalize their cars.
Distribution
Most of the new cars were sold through car dealerships in the 1950s, but Crosley cars were still sold in a number of tools or department stores, and Allstate (the rejuvenated Henry J) could be booked at Sears and Roebuck anywhere in 1952 and 1953. By mid-decade, these outlets have vanished and car dealerships are the only source of new cars.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the introduction of new cars in the fall is once again an anticipated event, as all dealers will reveal the model for the coming year every October. In this era before popularizing computerization, the main source of information about new models was dealers. This idea was originally proposed in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, as a way of stimulating the economy by creating demand. The idea was reintroduced by President Dwight Eisenhower for the same reason, and the method of introducing next year's model in the fall lasted until the 1990s.
During this decade, many smaller manufacturers could not compete with the Big Three and either out of business or join. In 1954, American Motors was formed when Hudson joined Nash-Kelvinator Corporation in a deal worth nearly $ 200 million, the largest corporate merger in US history at the time.
Car muscle
The age of muscles took root in the 1950s, although there was some debate about the right beginnings. The 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88, created in response to the public interest in speed and strength, is often referred to as the first muscle car. It featured the first high-compression V8 American high compression valve in a smaller, lighter Oldsmobile 76/Chevy body for a six-cylinder engine (compared to the larger Olds 98 luxury body). Old Cars Weekly claims that it started with the introduction of the original Hey V8 Chrysler "Firepower" engine in 1951, while others like the Hot Rod magazine consider the first overhead valve engine by Chevrolet, 265 cid V8, as "the heir to Ford's flathead position as a racetrack", in 1955. The "small Chevy block" itself develops its own subculture that exists today. Other competitors include the 1949 Oldsmobile V8 engine, the first in a long line of powerful V8 engines, as well as the Cadillac V8 in the same year.
Regardless of how it is credited, the horsepower racing centered around the V8 engine and the car-muscle era progressed until the new smoke regulations forced a dramatic change in OEM machine designs in the early 1970s. This in turn opens up new opportunities for aftermarket manufacturers such as Edelbrock. Each year carries a larger engine and/or enhanced horsepower, providing catalyst for customers to upgrade to newer models. The car executives also intentionally renewed the annual body design, in the name of "planned obsolescence" and added newly developed or enhanced features such as automatic transmission, power steering, power brake and cruise control, in an effort to make the previous model look outdated and facilitate a long journey from the suburbs. Record sales make this decade arguably the "golden age" of car manufacturers.
Harley Earl and Bill France Sr. popularized the proverbial "Race on Sunday, sell on Monday", a mantra that is still heard today in motor sports, especially in NASCAR. During the car-muscle era, manufacturers not only sponsor drivers, but also design special cars to compete in fast-growing and very popular sports.
Songs celebrating cars
Because cars are increasingly becoming an extension of the individual, it is natural that this is reflected in popular culture. America's love affair with the most real cars in the music of that era.
- "Rocket 88" was first recorded in 1951 and originally credited to Jackie Brenston and its Delta Cats, although later found to be the work of Cadence Kings Ike Turner. It is often credited as the first rock and roll song ever produced and has been covered by other artists.
- "Hot Rod Lincoln" was first recorded in 1955 by Charlie Ryan, and has since been recorded by Roger Miller and others. The 1960 Johnny Bond version was mapped at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. Comedian Jim Varney produced a version with Ricky Skaggs for The Beverly Hillbillies movie. The song is still a popular live song for artists like Asleep at the Wheel and Junior Brown.
- "Maybellene", released by Chuck Berry in 1955, is an uptempo rocker who describes hot rod races between his beloved lover and his unfaithful girlfriend. It was the # 5 hit and described by Rolling Stone as the starting point of the rock and roll guitar. "Wake Up Little Susie" recorded by The Everly Brothers, reached number one on the Billboard Pop chart, although it has been banned from Boston radio stations for lyrics about outlining our "reputation shot" because of the narrator and her dating friends slept through the date of the drive-through movie and missed their six-hour curfew.
- "Teen Angel" was released in 1959 and was initially met with denial by radio stations because of his dark message about a young girl who died in a car/train accident.
Other songs recorded during this decade also reflect the place of cars in American culture, such as "Brand New Cadillac", "Thunderbird" owned by Sonny Burgess, and "Cadillac" Bo Diddley. A 1955 Oldsmobile is celebrated in nostalgic "Ol ''55" by Tom Waits (1973).
See also
- American car industry in the 1950s
- Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1952
- List of car crash tracks
- List of dead car manufacturers from the United States
- Car history
- Motor vehicle time line
- Sailing
- Elvis' Pink Cadillac
- General Motors Motorama
References
Quote
Bibliography
External links
- Hot Rod includes magazines from the 1950s
- Old car manual project
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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