Stealing Cars: Technology and Society from the Model T to the Gran Torino

Conclusion: Stealing the American Dream

157 CONCLUSION Stealing the American Dream In summary, with very few exceptions, American culture has characterized auto theft as a crime that is not terribly serious or important, unless violence accompanies the act or it enables its perpetrators to commit other crimes. Essentially, the car is disposable. If damaged or lost, the car is often easily replaced with another vehicle, perhaps one that’s even better than the previous model. And, indeed, it is mass produced, made of uniform parts and in large numbers to effect economies of scale. But for many Americans, it is also an object of desire. And there lies the incongruity with parallel main currents in American life. For if Americans identify with their automobiles and have a love affair with a thing that evokes status and well-being, how can this object be seen in another light as something that can easily be replaced? If we are attached to this machine that has become a part of the family, how can we so easily say goodbye to it with no emotional remorse? Isn’t the crime a personal violation? Some victims never feel that the recovered car is the same and can never feel comfortable in that vehicle afterward . Auto theft, then, can only be seen as a long-standing paradox in American life that is not easily resolved. For generations, commentators, scholarly and otherwise, have waxed eloquent concerning the American love affair with the automobile , particularly as it applied to the mid-twentieth-century milieu, most specifically between the years 1955 and 1970. And some Americans did worship and love their cars in extreme ways, and still do to this day. But what do we mean by some? Many auto thieves connected sexuality and manhood to the automobile and were willing to take risks to drive one, even if it was not their own. As this study suggests, however, many more Americans had little affection for the car; it was 158 STEALING CARS merely the provider of basic transportation. Why else would so many car owners leave their keys in their cars, not caring whether they were stolen? Undoubtedly some owners were relieved to see the car gone. Or was the key left in the ignition a defiance of reality concerning how much trust was reasonable in America’s urban neighborhoods? Why did so many cultural representations of auto theft portray the car as just another technological contrivance, to be taken and at times wrecked? To understand auto theft is to understand one glaring inconsistency in a postmodern world of things, symbols, and values. Perhaps we need to reexamine the authenticity of the American love affair with the automobile and work toward a more holistic view of the place of the automobile in American life. As we completed our rather brief study, we discovered that what had started out as a topic on the margins of an examination of the automobile and American life has had far more to say about the center of that topic than we ever imagined. Just as the automobile has been a product of considerable creativity and technical ingenuity, auto thieves have exhibited those qualities too. The study has raised as many questions as it has answered, particularly in terms of institutional responses , cross-cultural relations, and human psychology and sociology . The problem of auto theft demanded a government response that overlapped jurisdictions and in doing so changed the nature of law enforcement practices and the limits of personal freedoms. The private industry with most at stake—the insurance industry—both lobbied for stricter law enforcement and pioneered scientific and technological measures to curb auto theft. Inventors working at both the center and the margins devised and constructed equipment that was ingenious and at the same time far from secure. Owners loved their cars but were often careless in protecting them. Architects designed structures to reduce crime, yet criminals largely ignored these concrete, stone, and wood fortifications. Crossing borders was, and remains, the car thief’s best strategy. And for the most dedicated of these lawbreakers, taking a car was often just one of many illegal acts that in more recent times are intimately connected to gangs and drugs. As we moved forward in time, we examined a frayed society increasingly unraveling, tenuously held together by law enforcement and technology. STEALING THE AMERICAN DREAM 159 Ultimately, and no matter how far we may dig into the sources...