The days of our lives pass before us like the pages of a bad existentialist novel: monotone office cubicles, ennui-inducing architecture and cars that morph together into a dull, endless stream. You may see a million Accords and Malibus in your lifetime, but you will remember none of them.
And then magic happens: You encounter something that sparks a thousand recollections and turns the world from grey to Technicolor. The particular object is impossible to predict – it could be a worn Fender Stratocaster guitar that recalls the time you saw Jimi Hendrix live, or a dress like the one your daughter wore at her first dance recital. Or it could be the vintage Pontiac GTO that rolled up next to me at a stoplight a while back.
The GTO glittered in the sunlight like a V-8-powered jewel. All the details were right: gold paint, nostril hood scoops and Cragar mag wheels. But there was more to this experience than just another nice, well-restored car. The GTO triggered a flood of memories.
I rolled down my window and asked the GTO's owner what year his car was. "1966," he replied.
I looked at the GTO again, and was transported back through the decades: I was suddenly a little boy again, assembling my Strombecker slot car set on the concrete basement floor. The Beatles had just released Revolver, my mother had a new hat like Jackie Kennedy's and the new National Geographic magazine was in the mailbox.
The GTO rumbled away and I was left wondering about its impact on me. Why do some cars evoke such an emotional response, while others pass unnoticed?
According to the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, memories can be divided into a number of categories. There are, for example, semantic memories, which you can recall, but with no special detail. Most powerful of all are involuntary, episodic memories that are triggered by something you encounter – episodic memories play back inside your head like movies.
And this is what the GTO triggered in myself, even though I've never owned one. The GTO isn't even the kind of car I'd want – my favourite machines are compact sports cars, not vintage American muscle with hoods the size of snooker tables.
The GTO's emotional power came from its authenticity. Its design spoke to its era, and to the company that made it – the GTO's big, clean-lined body and stacked chrome headlight assembly were pure 1966 Detroit. I imagined Don Draper at the wheel, cruising toward a business meeting or an assignation with a woman.
In 1966, the car world was a more eclectic place. You could buy a Shelby Cobra that looked like a V-8-powered bullfrog, or a Lincoln that conjured up a Frank Lloyd Wright house on wheels. Or you could go with a Citroën DS21, a French machine with a torpedo-shaped body and a hydro-pneumatic suspension that raised and lowered it like a camel. Then there was the Ford Mustang, the car that started the pony-car movement.
These cars were all wildly different. You instantly knew what each of them was and what it stood for. The Citroën was Charles de Gaulle with headlights; the Mustang was postwar America, full of new-world style and energy, pumping out music and racing toward the moon landing.
Today's automotive industry is a mature one, dominated by huge companies that prefer to make conservative bets when it comes to engineering and style. Design teams work on billion-dollar development programs, and the abiding instinct is to not make a mistake. The bestselling machines are conservative, evolutionary designs that have been vetted by executive teams and focus groups.
Is it any surprise that so many of today's cars are so similar? Although car buffs can tell them apart, the Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry and Chevy Malibu blur together in the mind of the casual observer. So do Audis and Mercedes. These are all excellent, useful machines, but the edges have been sanded off.
Modern engineering and manufacturing have given us the best-built machines in history. Even the lowliest economy car comes out of the factory with perfect panel gaps, robust electrical fittings and concentric cylinder bores. Gone are the days when stoned auto workers failed to tighten the bolts on your new car's driveshaft or welded a Coke bottle into the door sill, where it would clunk for the rest of the car's days, an unfixable, eternal reminder of their anger with management.
No one wants to return to the days of union-management wars. But it sure would be nice if cars became wildly different again, so that you knew what each was at a glance. That's what makes the movies play in your head. Scientists call them involuntary episodic memories. We call them dreams. And we could always use more.
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