Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence and Persistence of the Car 1895–1940 by Gijs Mom (review)

This ambitious and iconoclastic book will generate substantial debate among historians of the automobile. Gijs Mom sets himself the aim of charting the origin and consolidation of an Atlantic culture of automobilism. To this end, he examines the United States, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Great Britain, Switzerland, and Germany with the help of sources ranging from statistics to car journals to literary texts to film. He proposes that historians have largely overlooked a shared car culture that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic before World War II. He connects his argument with a critique of studies of Americanization that cast the United States, with its lead in mass motorization, as the model that Western Europe emulated. Finally, the book rejects the “toy-to-tool myth” (p. 4) that has attributed the automobile’s historical success to its ability to evolve from a mechanical curiosity into an instrument that justified purchase and maintenance costs through superior use value.

Mom is superb in pressing the last point. He shows convincingly that early cars functioned as “adventure machines” that triggered highly emotive impulses. The need to master a dangerous technology counted among the attractions of the early car, as did its potential for extended excursions. Moreover, many early owners thrived on the challenge of maintaining a mechanically imperfect artifact. Both in the United States and in Western Europe, the deficiencies of the early car gave rise to an overwhelmingly male automotive culture due to its emphasis on danger and technical expertise.

In the interwar period, car use expanded significantly and brought a new promise. Rather than adventure, the automobile now held the prospect of comfort, in part because of the development of closed car bodies. Although auto use increased on both sides of the Atlantic and thus became a collective pursuit, the car retained deeply individualistic connotations. In particular, the automobile opened up unprecedented touring pleasures. Mom identifies its domestication in the context of the family as a defining characteristic of Atlantic automobility during the interwar years. This taming of the unruly machine, however, did not subvert its ability to generate experiences of transcendence that allowed drivers and passengers to step beyond everyday life. Indeed, Mom interprets the act of driving as giving rise to “cyborg feelings” because of the “magic unit with technology” (p. 645) achieved by those behind the wheel.

The book excels at showing how a wide range of affects supported widespread love of the automobile—as well as opposition to it. His analysis is strengthened by the inclusion of literary sources; these texts allow him to analyze driving as an aesthetic experience and thus highlight feelings released while driving with the help of highly eloquent material.

As Mom deftly moves beyond the toy-to-tool myth, some of his arguments may well emerge as bones of contention. His claim that both sides of the Atlantic shared a fairly similar culture of automobilism throughout the interwar period is likely to be seen as a provocation. Compared with Europe, car-based mass motorization affected American everyday life more profoundly, generating a vast range of auto-related experiences or “embodied practices” of individual mobility, as cultural theorists would have it. As Mom himself highlights, in interwar Britain and Germany, motorcycles proved far more popular than in the United States, thereby giving rise to different embodied practices of individual mobility. How this difference in the conduct of everyday life, which amounted to a sharp cultural contrast, corresponds with Mom’s overarching argument will require further debate.

The question of whether Mom accords sufficient weight to political ideology in his ambitious sample of countries is also likely to generate more than one reply. The largely unqualified inclusion of Nazi Germany in a shared Atlantic culture of automobilism will be seen as another provocation. To be sure, Hitler admired Ford, and the National Socialists praised the car’s potential to enhance people’s spare time. Yet these connections and similarities...