Whether you live on the Canadian prairies or in the shanty-towns around Harare, the private automobile has a seductive mystique. Cars are the mechanical embodiment of personal freedom, of the ability to be in control, to go where you want when you please. Nonetheless the illusion of freedom is important. Today this ideology is stronger than ever, though the sales pitch is somewhat more sophisticated. Cars are now sold as items of fashion, as extensions of our self-image and as symbols of our wealth and taste.
Cars also symbolize raw power.
Speed is a key selling-point in most advertising. Speed and sex are strong selling-points in a world obsessed with performance and transfixed by the commercial frenzy of the marketplace. The irony is that in many cities you can actually get around more quickly with a bicycle than a car. If you re one of the hundred thousand motorists who tackle the M25 ring road around London every day you ll already have sampled it. In some sections the highway already carries more cars than the UK Department of Transport forecast it would by the year 2001.