California has been called the "Car Capitol" of the world. Not because any cars are made here, but because people love their cars and drive them in droves. Some think we are defined by our cars or our wheels. That we sort of wear our cars here like someone would wear an expensive overcoat in New York. Our cars are a way of showing the world who we are.
Californians have been nuts about cars right from the start of the motoring age.
No one knows what the first car in California was but it's clear some couldn't wait to have their auto itch scratched by an import from back east. So they built their own. A tradition of tinkering that's lasted until today.
These early cars were rather crude. Mostly converted buggies or carriages. The horses were put out to pasture, an engine was installed and some sort of steering device. One early LA car used the wheel from an irrigation pump. Innovation was the key.
While there were a few poor backyard builders, most early auto enthusiasts were rich. Cars were expensive and they weren't being mass produced. Cars were not really a practical means of transportation but more a device for adventure.
Bad roads, and finnicky engineering meant that any drive was an adventure. Auto owners doubled as mechanics.
Someone who could fix the inevitable flat tires that would occur on an outing.
Henry Ford set out to make cars for the masses. In the process he shaped our state. It's said that Ford got the idea for the moving assembly line while watching how cattle were slaughtered and progressively dismembered in the stockyards in Chicago. His breakthrough was to reverse the process and apply it to auto assembly. Instead of packages of neatly wrapped parts of prime meats his factory took metal parts and turned them into Model T's. By 1913, his Highland Park, Michigan plant was turning out a car every few minutes.
And Californians were being led to his dealerships by the siren call of the open road. The commoners were discovering what the rich saw in the car. Within a days drive you could take the family to the mountains, the beach, the desert or find a secluded spot to court a girl. The world was shrinking and opening up at the same time.
Bad roads made driving a problem but civic leaders formed groups like the California Auto Club to lobby for ways to bring order out of the chaos. Roads were paved, traffic lights were invented, stripes painted on the roads and rules drawn up to regulate the impulses of harried drivers.
Roads improved in the cities but getting from one city to the next was still a difficult matter. In 1911, a prize was offered to anyone who could drive from San Francisco to Reno, Nevada. There were many attempts but finally one team made it. It only took them eight days to make what is now a four to six hour trip. Demonstrations like these and the efforts of others prodded the state to build and improve roads.
At the same time, another new invention, the movies, discovered the car. The first films of the Keystone Cops showed them on foot or in wagons chasing bad guys. But the Keystone force became mobile as more cars came into the state. These slapstick law enforcers helped to further popularize the car and Los Angeles.
Many of the early silent films were geared for the growing immigrant audiences around the country. Since they were silent and you could pretty well make out the plot without the reader cards, you didn't need to understand English to enjoy the stories. They were cheap and accessible. Like cars.
The vision of Los Angeles that was seen in these early silents was an open, sunny town. This proved to be a lure to many who slipped into a theater on a cold day in New York and saw images of bright California skies flickering on the screen.
Aided by the mobility of the car, Los Angeles started to grow out, not up like New York as the westward migration turned into a stampede.
LA is a late bloomer as far as cities go but this tardy development made it the first major city on earth whose shape was forged by the automobile. LA's vast stretches of turf were knitted together by the car.
Hollywood's image factories continued to influence the auto world. As the car became commonplace the cinema's stars wanted something different.
They turned to specialty builders in Southern California. All the major stars wanted to have custom cars.
The tradition continued through the Depression as a new raft of stars turned to custom builders like Pasadena's, Bohman and Schwartz to conjure up something unique for them to be seen in.
It didn't take Detroit long to catch on that there was something happening out here. In 1928, General Motors Chairman sent out a search party to find out why so many Cadillacs were being shipped to one Los Angeles dealer.
The answer was simple. Harley Earl. Earl's neighbor, C. B. DeMille had instilled in the young man a sense of showmanship and Harley applied it to his car designs.
GM had to have him. They lured Earl back to Detroit and let him start the first auto design studio at a major manufacturer. This forever changed the auto world.
Earl instituted the annual design change. Started to get rid of running boards. Molded the headlights into the fenders and worked to lower the cars over the frame. His was a modernist view of design.
To do this, he employed more artists than any enterprise since the Renaissance. Hundreds of sculptors and painters were charged with turning sheet metal, leather and plastic into dream machines.
He never left his California custom roots far behind. Earl is credited with dreaming up the dream cars. His one-of-a-kind show cars helped to stimulate America's appetite for new cars.
In the 1940's, Earl's auto alchemists had to put down their tools and pick up rifles as they headed to War. The auto industry ground to a halt. All new car production was stopped and the factories were converted to become the Arsenal of Democracy.
In California, the car craze was put on the back burner as the boys shipped out.
When the War ended, the returning heroes were itching to turn their savings and pent up desires into new auto realities.
Some couldn't wait for Detroit's factories to retool and decided to build their own. This group of pioneers also enjoyed to race. Others heard about their weekly races on California's high deserts lake beds and started to flock to the meets. The Hot Rod movement took off.
California's Drive-Ins became the headquarters for the movement and the place to go if you wanted to pick up a race or a date.
Street racing became a problem. The police and the newspapers joined hands to stamp out hot rodders.
Fearing that their sport and lifestyle were threatened with extinction, California's hot rodders came up with a solution -- drag racing. It was safe and it got the racers off the streets. You could even charge for people to watch. It caught on and spread all over the country.
Hollywood knew a trend when it saw one. Moviemakers quickly took the hot rodders to heart and started to turn out drive-in movie fodder to lure the young make out artists into the theaters. Hot cars, squealing tires, and giggling breasts. It was a formula that worked.
Detroit finally started to build cars again but many Californians weren't impressed. The hot rodders thought they were too slow and another group, the sports car lovers, thought they were too cumbersome.
Right after the War, many returning GI's started to lust after mechanical brides --- cute little red MG TC's. The theory is that they'd driven them while overseas but it's unclear if that's true. What is certain is that these cars caught on in a big way in Southern California. They were made to be driven on curvy roads with the top down. They didn't go too fast but they were fun to drive.
Jaguar and others saw how MG was pulling in buckets of solid American currency with its MG and decided that they'd also pursue the American market. Jaguar's stunning XK-120 set hearts racing and upped the sports car ante.
Mercedes quickly rebuilt its War damaged factories. After showing that it could once again race on the world stage they transformed their racecars into a stunning and fast road car. The Gullwing Coupe is considered to be one of the most beautiful cars ever built.
Porsche also had its eyes on the US sports car world and its biggest market -- California. The slippery Porsches were quickly grabbed up by California enthusiasts who found these Teutonic tyros were perfect for a trip up the coast, into the canyons or even to the office.
The winning exploits of Santa Monica's own Phil Hill, showed the world that Americans were more than just consumers. We needed to be taken seriously on the track.
By the mid-50's some of California's hot rodders had infiltrated Detroit's auto companies and helped the automakers discover ways to make their cars faster. With the advent of the Chevy V-8 Detroit began to give performance hungry buyers something to cheer about.
Californians flocked to these powerful Detroit Muscle and Pony cars. T-Birds, Mustangs, GTO's, and Dodge Chargers all found a ready welcome mat in Southern California garages.
But there was a counter culture that rejected both the sleek sports car and the muscle cars. For an increasing number of buyers the simple, rugged and inexpensive Volkswagen, and the few Japanese cars, represented what a car should be. Even before the gas shortages they thought about fuel efficiency, quality and durability. They were laughed at in Detroit but when OPEC shut down the oil pipeline many joined them.
Gas prices shot up and people flocked to the imports. They discovered that not only were the Japanese cars fuel efficient they were well built. Something complacent American car companies had ignored for years.
As the imports started to clog California's docks the Japanese companies set up administrative offices near the ports. Eventually these offices would grow to include design centers and marketing departments that would add millions of dollars to the California economy
The design centers were built because it became clear that their cars were not very exciting and they needed to create cars that the California market would like.
While Detroit continued to dismiss the imports as not much of a threat, the Japanese, and then the Europeans, began to aggressively recruit from California's Art Center Design program to tap into that unique California sensibility.
An early success story out of this Pacific Rim cultural cross-pollination is the Mazda Miata. Created by Mark Jordan, the son of a former General Motors chief designer, Jordan set out to design what he thought an MG would look like today. It reignited the sports car world and led to a slew of wonderful sports cars. The BMW Z-3, the Porsche Boxster, the Mercedes SLK and a new Jaguar roadster.
The success of these cars helped to reconfirm California's importance in the auto world. The trends start here and you can't ignore the California mind set. The Prius caught on here first and both the electric Tesla and Fisker are products of California. An automaker may survive without a California presence but it's not clear that they will thrive. While we can't predict the future many feel we'll see it here first.
California is the home to eleven import car companies and design studios for most domestic manufacturers. Almost every carmaker has a design studio here responsible for turning out cars for the world.
It's an exciting place to be for a car lover.
