Cars, modernism, vague Pynchon resonances

[Carvill John]

Happy New Year to all p-listers.
 
Just found this article (because it was in a Sunday Supplmeent that'd got wedged down between a chest of drawers and a table, and my son just shook it loose in the course of one of his regular rampages.....) on cars, modernism, design, and sexuality, by Spephen Bayley. Certainly seemed to trigger, for me, V., GR, & Against the Day resonances.
 
Main article, on the cars, is here:
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/28/motoring.cars1
 
Most Pynchonian bit is this though:
 

The sexual allure of cars
Stephen Bayley The Observer, Sunday 28 September 2008
 
A car is the most symbolically rich thing we ever buy. No other artefact requires such investment of energy, money and passion to manufacture. No other artefact sucks such cupidity and yearning from its consumers. Cars are overwhelmingly potent, and there are reasonable and rational forces trying to curtail our use of them, but once - as Henry Ford realised long ago - you've let the genie of consumer freedom out of the box, there's no putting it back. 
 
And as John Steinbeck noted, the popularity of the Model T means 'two generations of Americans know more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system'. Earlier artists also caught the erotic sense of speed machines. At the beginning of the 20th century, futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti said: 'I became inflamed with the fever and desire of the steely breaths from your full nostrils! I finally unleash your metallic bride...' Was he addressing his car or his mistress? Or both? It is a positional dilemma still known today. But the great age of car design could not outlive the destructive success of the machine which, as if a classical myth, has systematically destroyed its own support system. Between the Forties and Seventies, cars of astonishing commercial beauty were manufactured. 
 
The relationship between cars and sex is deep. Like all matters of aesthetics, the answer to the question 'What makes a car sexy?' has direct and associational aspects. A car's shape has a direct effect on us: sensuous surfaces, voluptuous radii, masculine girth and aggressive projections all have an erotic character. The associations are more subtle, but perhaps more significant. Words readily associated with cars - speed, performance, pleasure, danger - are an occult vocabulary of sex. Factor in notions of comfort, security and texture, and you have the pre-eminent mechanical aphrodisiac.But with the first oil shock of 1973, a book ever so quietly closed. Ever since, cars with a sexual character have been pornographic rather than erotic: parodic and preposterous, not essential and sublime. A moment has passed with a whiff of leather and hot oil.
 
 
 
The 10 sexiest cars ever

1949 Porche 356
  
1961 Jaguar E Type
  
1951 Lancia Aurelia H20 GT
  
1948 Jaguar XK120
  
1968 Ferrari Daytona
  
1952 Bentley R Type
  
1953 AC Ace
  
1953 Chevrolet Corvette
  
1955 Citreon DS
  
1955 Mga 

 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/28/motoring.cars
 
 
Cheers
JC
 
 
 
 
 
 
_________________________________________________________________
It’s the same Hotmail®. If by “same” you mean up to 70% faster.
http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_broad1_122008