cars and record players

Cars and Record Players

When I was a kid,  my first real stereo record player was a cool little portable job that resembled a suitcase of sorts.  It even had a handle on the top like a real suitcase – Portable!  That was the operative word.  It had two speakers on either end that were detachable,  and when you took them off and placed them at … just the … right distance from each other and sat directly in front of this amazing machine you would be afforded,  according to the instruction manual,  that ever so desirable   ‘full stereo effect’!  Ecstasy for the hammers and anvils in your ears.  I remember spending hours in front of the thing listening to my first stereo record : Washington Square,  by the Village Stompers.  But frankly,  I’m not so sure it was the stereo so much as the portability that was its main selling point.  I mean,  stereo had been around since the fifties and I bought this record player in the mid sixties.

It was called the Mustang,  named after the ground breaking design of the hot new sports car – A car!  Sure!  Portability.  Car!

Of course,  this wasn’t the first example of non-sequitur design.  That is,  taking one consumer product,  like,  say,  something frumpy,  like a washing machine and giving it the lines of the latest fashion or art or … Car!  Think art-deco,  the most profound example in recent history!  Everything in the twenties looked like everything else.  I invite you to go downtown to 17^th and J.F.K. and stare at Suburban Station.  It’s incredible.

Anyway,  reminiscing about my little portable record player that looked like a car got me to thinking about cars and what they looked like over the years. 

The first cars looked like … Well,  a simple frame.  Open,  like a buck board,  the main means of transportation at the time.  And they were called … Well,  they didn’t really know what to call them.  So they just called them what they were :  ‘machines’  I know this from talking to my old,  old neighbor,  Mr. Dass when I lived back in Philly over forty years ago.

In the 1920s,  they added a cabin,  and they became  ‘horseless’  carriages. 

Railroad trains had been around long before the 1930s but it was in the thirties when the lowly freight train was superseded by the slick and smooth and luxurious – and oh so fast way for paying customers,  not just hobos,  to travel from one place to another.  To me,  cars of the thirties and forties look like the engines of some of those famous trains that ran across the country and up an down it,  rounded and powerful,  ready to take on a thousand miles of track without a deep breath and with a dining car to boot,  where you could order Eggs Benedict in the morning after sleeping the night away in the Pullman.                

The ’50s.  Trains were old hat.  Everyone was flying – Frank Sinatra crooned :  Come fly with me,  we’ll fly,  we’ll fly away!

And the cars looked like airplanes,  culminating in the 1959 Chevy,  with its wings for tail fins and the subsequent warnings about hydroplaning in the rain.   

The ‘60s and ‘70s saw the space race heating up and the cars tried,  albeit miserably,  to look like rocket ships and satellites but succeeded in name only.  That is,  only the names of the cars invoked man’s intrepid journey to the moon and beyond. 

In the ’80s and ’90s the automobile needed not mimic anything.  The car was king.  If anything,  other consumer products would have to mimic it!  Like my Mustang stereo.  The only problem?  The car was finally unmasked as the fraud it is.  Just what Mr. Daas told me back forty years ago :  a machine,  not unlike that frumpy washing machine.  And for the next few decades the car,  with nothing to emulate,  became more and more non descript. 

I’m not a car guy,  and maybe there were a lot ground breaking designs in the ’90s and the aughts and the teens but you know what I think cars look like today? 

Running shoes.

And we’ve come full circle.  Back to the first,  and best,  mode of transportation :

FEET!