Donald Trump and Dictatorial Taste

[pbrower2a]

(03-15-2017, 04:24 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I do remember being 14, which I turned the year 2000 (yeah, I know), and being able to tell what decade a car was made just by looking at it, and being eager to see what the next decades styles would bring.  Apparently the answer, 17 years later, is absolutely nothing.

Although, to be honest, I am pretty sure wind tunnels and computer-modeling software have a lot to do with it as well.  Not to mention the old issues of standardized frames and other parts.

Looking forward, I remain hopeful that things like electric and driverless cars, which afford the opportunity to radically change things like motor and steering wheel placement, will allow for more radical changes in body styles.  On the other hand, I think we are past the glorious heyday of the automobile as status signifier/symbol of freedom/ubiquitous asset.

I outgrew the taste for vehicular speed before I was at the legal age to drive. But this said, I can more easily distinguish GM and Ford car models by year between 1955 and 1965 than I can distinguish cars built today.

I predict that most cars will be redesigned for multi-modal use (so that they can be shipped for long parts of journeys involving them), that there will be collective ownership of cars (so that you won't so much own a car as have access to a car at a certain location) and of course self-driving.  Self-driving takes the 'pony car', a small with a small body and a big engine, out of the mix. If you drive a shared car, you may not get to keep what you leave in it by mistake, so farewell, Beatles CD or book on disc.

Cars were long precarious as symbols of social position. Used cars of any kind became what economists call 'inferior goods', whatever the brand. Those cars were cast off to the not-so-rich, to people who had to compromise. The late-model Cadillac or Mercedes-Benz could be the car of a successful physician -- or of a criminal. In some places such cars are known as "pimpmobiles"; a successful attorney or physician who must operate in such a neighborhood needs to be more subtle in his taste. It is possible that conspicuous consumption of any kind can indicate someone other than a genuine success. It could reflect someone with a large and disreputable income or someone with extreme insecurity. Add to this, the middle class is typically able to buy some luxury. My parents had a shared car fetish, but typically spent their vacations visiting relatives. At least they weren't gambling their earnings away.

People with unlimited funds, whether tycoons, tyrants, or thugs, can buy just about anything that they want that isn't already both unique and someone else's. Having a Great Room that resembles a hotel lobby, a dance room, or a mosque (my first impression of what the Ceausescus had) is a possibility for someone rich and powerful.

One might have one's own train car, as did Josip Broz Tito, long-time dictator of Yugoslavia:



(Eric the Green -- if you see this thread, you will notice something about the design of the images).
 
Surely this impressed dignitaries from Spain to New Zealand, from China to Chile, from both sides of the DMZ in Korea, and from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.