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Dimitry Anastakis discusses the tale of entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin’s Safety Vehicle-1, a legendary failure in automotive history yet one that reveals much about postwar North America’s economic, political, and cultural evolution.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 20, 2024

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This video video discusses the author's motivation and experience in writing a book about the Bricklin sports car, which was developed in New Brunswick in the 1970s by American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin. The author found Bricklin's story compelling and unique, as it highlights the only new car from a new company built in North America between the 1940s and the Tesla Roadster in 2008.

The author employed various research methodologies, utilizing extensive secondary literature, interviews, documentaries, and even cultural references like songs and films to examine the automotive landscape and its cultural implications. The book explores how automobility is intertwined with North American identity, capitalism, entrepreneurship, and societal shifts from the mid-20th century to today.

The narrative includes the background of Bricklin's venture, the government's financial support, and the ultimate failure of the company, drawing parallels to other failed automotive endeavors like the DeLorean. The author discusses broader themes such as industrial modernity, the impact of the automobile on sex, gender dynamics, and the environmental challenges posed by the industry.

Furthermore, the book uses the Bricklin as a lens to discuss how the automotive industry shapes social and economic landscapes, as well as its dual role as a driver of change and a source of significant societal issues, particularly regarding safety and environmental concerns. It highlights the automobile industry's historical significance and future challenges, particularly in transitioning to electric vehicles and addressing climate change.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This book came out

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because it's a pretty fascinating story on the face of it,

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about a guy who, who comes from the United States

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to New Brunswick to build a sports car

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with galling doors in the early 1970s.

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It's kind of unusual, but it did stem from some earlier work

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I had been doing, writing about the

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Canadian auto industry within a

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North American and global context.

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And I had known about the Bricklin incident,

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and I had used it as a small example.

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And I realized, Hey,

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this is such an unusual, compelling story.

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It really deserves its own fulsome tale.

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So I decided to write the book about it.

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And, I've, it's been a, a great ride, to be honest

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with you, because it's such an unusual tale.

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So the research was, a different,

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a few different types of methodologies, a lot

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of secondary writing because,

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it's the automotive industry in North America,

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and this was the only car, new car from a new car company

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that was built in North America between the 1940s

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and, the arrival of the Roadster by Tesla in 2008.

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There's a lot of secondary literature on it,

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and Malcolm Bricklin himself is

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a pretty interesting character.

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So there's lots of newspaper stories,

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but it's not just that.

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There are three documentaries on the Bricklin story.

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There is a musical play written about the Brickland story

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that was performed in New Brunswick.

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Uh, I did some interviews with Malcolm Brickland

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and I went to New Brunswick

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and checked out the scene as well.

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But it was a fun book to do research on,

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because there's been a lot, of, writing about it.

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And, you know, in the age of, digitization, there's

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so much material online.

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Uh, there's all kinds of interviews.

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There's all kinds of podcasts.

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You know, Jay Leno did an episode of one

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of his shows on the Bricklin in the Car.

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You can use that kind of material

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as part of your own research.

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So, really wide ranging,

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and eclectic, sources.

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I also, because it's the early 1970s, use, movies,

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poems, songs, the book has a playlist that's attached

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to it, which is a pretty fun playlist.

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And it includes everything from songs

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that were written about the bricklin at the time, to,

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David Bowie, to Bruce Springsteen,

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to Tracy Chapman songs about cars, effectively.

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'cause it's a book about cars.

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So, yeah, because it's, a book about a car,

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and, you know, Automobility is the driving,

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kind of theme behind it.

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I'm using this, car as a vehicle, literally to kind

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of take a look at different aspects

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of North American history and society

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and how it was changing in the period between the 1940s

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and fifties, right up until today, especially around,

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ideas around industrial modernity,

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industrial post modernity.

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But it's, it's such a neat little, way of doing this,

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because I said to the reader, I say to the reader, you know,

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get behind the wheel of this car, and let's drive around

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and look at issues like, you know, entrepreneurship.

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Let's look at interest like issues like risk

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and safety, issues like, performance, showmanship,

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innovation,

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Sex, business, and all these different aspects.

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And, when I, I was realizing that I was writing the book

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that, you know, there's a narrative to the story about,

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the idea, behind the bricklin

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where this guy comes to New Brunswick.

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He is an American who, got, some success

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with bringing Subaru cars to North America.

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He's the first guy to bring Subaru cars to North America.

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And then he decides, I'm gonna put this money into build my

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own amazing, sexy sports car with gall wing doors.

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Uh, and it's kind of such a, a, a,

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a unique card, a unique story.

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I thought I'd use that and say, Hey, in terms

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of the structure of the book, you can literally get

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behind the wheel of the SV one

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and go to different spots along these,

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aspects of automobility.

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So I said, you know, I'll tell you the, the,

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the story upfront, which is, he comes to New Brunswick,

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the government of New Brunswick gives him

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$25 million to build the car.

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They build 3000, it goes bankrupt.

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It causes a pretty big scandal

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because it's a lot of taxpayer money.

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It's a lot like the DeLorean

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and what happens in Northern Ireland

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just about a decade later.

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Uh, but, you know, that's just one aspect of it.

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When you use the car to talk about different aspects

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of society that are changing because the auto industry

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and Automobility is so central to North American identity,

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and in some ways global identity

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and the way we think about aspects of capitalism, oil,

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geopolitics, you know, the automobile

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as a landscape shaping, agent of change,

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you know, from railways to how we make our houses,

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I thought it was a great way to kind

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of just get by in the wheel of the car.

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And the reader can jump around, from chapter to chapter.

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They don't have to go through the book in a particular order

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if they wanna just drive straight to the chapter on sex

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and look at, excuse me,

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and look at how, I use the bricklin

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to talk about the impact of automobility on sex and gender.

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They can do so, and they don't miss a beat in terms

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of learning about the broader story.

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So the automobile

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and the automobile industry is often referred to

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as capitalism's favorite child.

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The industry of industries,

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I mean, it's the biggest business.

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It's the most important business.

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I mean, anybody who's listening knows who Elon Musk is.

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They know about the impact of automobility

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and this, dramatic change that we're going

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through from the internal combustion engine

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to the electric vehicle.

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Well, in the 20th century, auto mo's,

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automotive was really the biggest business

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and the leading capitalists that we kind of portray as icons

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of capitalism, whether it's Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler,

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or Henry Ford ii or Lee I Koka, or, Alfred Sloan

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or Elon Musk.

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These are all examples of some

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of the leading capitalist figures of our time.

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And they're connected to the auto industry

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because the auto industry has such a profound change.

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Uh, people always talk about creative destruction as a,

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a way that capitalism really reshapes

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the world and the landscape.

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Well, there's no more creative,

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creative destruction agent than the automobile.

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So, from Henry Ford to Malcolm Brickland to Elon Musk,

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I use the car and these entrepreneurs

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and leading capitalists to talk about how automobility

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and entrepreneurship and capitalism are all interconnected.

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And that, you know, the automobile becomes kind

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of like a vehicle of, of change within capitalism,

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and such a profound agent of change in reshaping the world.

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I mean, I, I, I go back to this pretty often,

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but between Henry Ford, who often is credited as being,

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the most important capitalist in, you know, American,

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if not global history in the last couple hundred of years,

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all the way to Elon Musk, who's often kind of seen as a,

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an a 21st century analog of Henry Ford.

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You can't get past, the auto industry,

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if you're gonna talk about capitalism

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and just how much of a impact it's had.

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And it's not just about the cars

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and the way they shape our world.

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I mean, the auto industry has had a profound impact upon,

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distribution, supply chain, marketing, advertising,

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innovation, cross border trade, tariffs.

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There's so many aspects that are tied up in automotive,

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and, and any,

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anybody who's listening wherever they are in the world

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thinks about, you know, that car industry

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that might be in their country or not in their country.

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Uh, and the way that the automobile sector plays

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such a huge role.

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And one of the, one of the things I often talk about is I

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say, especially in North America, you know, in a lot

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of small towns, the largest single employer usually is an

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auto dealer, and it dominates the kind

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of economic landscape.

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But if you go from that,

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and you think about the car companies

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and the manufacturing facilities, the factories that are

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so important in terms of employment and investment

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and the way they can shape the fate of towns

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or a whole regions, it's pretty profound.

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I mean, in the UK for instance, they're going

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through a pretty big transition right now

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where the auto industry is under a lot of pressure.

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Whether or not it continues

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to exist is gonna have a profound impact for tens

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of thousands, if not hundreds

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of thousands of ordinary people.

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So, automobility

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and capitalism are kind of hand in hand,

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and they are impossible to separate.

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And, that's one of the great things about this book,

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even though it's about an obscure car company that's,

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in, in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1970s, it speaks

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to broader issues that you can really read into.

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So, cars and sex also go hand in hand in a weird way,

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because, you know, before, the automobile arrived

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and, really, reshaped

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and created modernity, you know, most

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of society lived a, a rural agricultural existence.

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And that had a pretty profound impact, not just on,

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relationships and sex and marriage and dating,

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but it really did, determine the kind of scope

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and scale of how people met each other.

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It was local, it was rural.

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Uh, people got together

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because they were in, marriages

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that were often arranged depending upon

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Financial or religious or ethnic or racial status,

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because everybody was localized in small towns,

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even in cities, it was pretty close.

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Well, the car completely changes that

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because it allows people to go further afield

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to meet people, and it gives them privacy and speed.

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So for the first time, starting in the 1900,

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you see this idea of dating a peer,

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where people will show up at a place

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or meet someone, they'll get into a car together,

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and it allows their relationships

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to occur no longer under the watchful eye of parents

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or chaperones or neighbors.

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They can go and drive to a lover's lane or a blueberry hill.

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And it's not just that it gets them away from parents.

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They now have a little private space that they can do things

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with and do things in you, you start to see the emergence

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of, motor hotels, motels, which are other places

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where people can drive to.

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So the car really changes, not just the act of sex.

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And I have lots of examples in the book.

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In the 1910s and 1920s, there's all these judges

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who are railing against automobiles saying, my God,

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this is a, a a a a, a wagon, a sex wagon.

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It becomes like a brothel on wheels.

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There's all these crimes that are related to this.

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You know, Henry Ford shortens the length

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of the seats in the Model T

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because he finds out people are using Model Ts to, you know,

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have relationships, and he doesn't like this idea.

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So it changes the dynamics of, sexuality

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and relationships and gender as well,

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because, you know, this is an arrow where,

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the emergence of,

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women's rights suffrage is happening at the same time

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that the car is appearing.

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And this idea about, you know, whether women should drive

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or not, is actually something that happens.

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And obviously, women become drivers.

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It changes the dynamic of the equality of genders.

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And it also really, becomes the kind of shorthand

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for understanding how we see gender

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and gender relationships, because automobiles are seen

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initially as a kind of male dominated public sphere.

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Women start to get into it.

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But women are often seen as being, you know, ornamental

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or secondary to the idea of cars that women are, you know,

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oftentimes portrayed as cars.

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The Ford Model t its first big nickname is the Tin Lizzie.

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It's anthropomorphized as a female.

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And you start to see a kind of connection between

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how we see cars and automobiles,

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and how sex kind of plays a big role in that,

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not just the way cars look,

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but the way they're marketed and sold.

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And this is where the Bricklin comes in,

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in 1973 when Malcolm Bricklin launches, this car.

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It's right at the, you know, right

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after the, sexual revolution

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of the 19 sex sixties is really erupted.

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So you start to see examples of sexy cars, pony cars,

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like the Mustang or the Corvette,

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and there's a kind of connection between the sexuality, the

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explicit sexuality of cars as a way to sell cars,

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but also as a way of, people seeing themselves

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as an image of a driver.

11:57.145 --> 12:00.845
So people, males especially buy sexy cars

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because it, it makes them feel like they're gonna be

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more sexually potent.

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And this is something that Malcolm Bricklin

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really explicitly talks about.

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When he designs the car, he says,

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I want it to be a sexy car.

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I want it to be something that, guys would buy

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because they would, you know, feel good about themselves.

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In the book, I talk about how he,

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he'd get letters from people who would say, Mr.

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Bricklin, thank you for building this car.

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You know, I never got laid before I bought a bricklin,

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and now I have, you know, women throwing myself,

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throwing themselves at me because of this.

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So, I mean, it's a bit crude,

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and it really speaks to the kind of gender roles

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and the continuing gender roles that exist.

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But it shows you just how connected automobility is to sex.

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Not just having sex

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and finding, private places to have sex

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and go away to have sex, but the fact

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that cars themselves are seen as artifacts of sexuality

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and gender as well.

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So, I wouldn't call it an ode to the automobile in the sense

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that I do use the car to talk about the tremendous impact

12:59.965 --> 13:02.565
that Automobility has had, but I'm, I'm just as critical.

13:02.645 --> 13:05.645
I, I talk about some of the changes that have gone on

13:05.675 --> 13:07.125
between the 1950s

13:07.145 --> 13:09.965
and 1960s when, you know, that's the kind of height,

13:10.025 --> 13:12.685
the zenith of a post-war automobility, where you have,

13:12.865 --> 13:16.885
you know, big cars with tail fins,

13:16.885 --> 13:19.445
and there's all kinds of, kind of culture of cars

13:19.445 --> 13:20.885
where people aren't that questioning about it.

13:20.945 --> 13:22.085
And then by the time you get to the sixties

13:22.145 --> 13:24.845
and seventies, people are starting to question the car.

13:24.845 --> 13:25.925
They're saying, Hey, look,

13:25.955 --> 13:27.765
it's got environmental consequences.

13:27.955 --> 13:29.725
It's got pollution consequences.

13:30.145 --> 13:32.605
You know, there's all these cars that are risky.

13:32.755 --> 13:34.405
They, you know, there's accidents

13:34.405 --> 13:35.525
that people die in cars.

13:35.715 --> 13:37.285
There's a lot of problems with cars.

13:37.425 --> 13:39.405
And one of the things that happens in,

13:39.405 --> 13:43.285
with Bricklin is he tries to see his car as a way

13:43.285 --> 13:44.445
to solve some of these problems.

13:44.745 --> 13:47.405
So even though it's a sexy sports car with gull wings,

13:47.405 --> 13:49.485
that looks like, almost like a Corvette,

13:49.705 --> 13:51.165
he calls it a safety vehicle,

13:51.315 --> 13:54.845
because he's really kind of jumping off the,

13:54.985 --> 13:58.245
safety revolution that sparked by Ralph Nader in the 1960s,

13:58.495 --> 14:02.365
where Rader Nader, you know, he, he accuses a Detroit

14:02.625 --> 14:06.205
of being really kind of like uncaring about customers.

14:06.205 --> 14:07.725
You know, they don't build safe cars.

14:07.955 --> 14:09.565
They don't have seat belts in their cars.

14:09.565 --> 14:11.165
They don't have collapsible steering wheels,

14:11.165 --> 14:12.765
they don't have safety proof glass.

14:13.105 --> 14:15.005
You know, cars are really dangerous.

14:15.585 --> 14:17.245
And, Brickland says, you know what?

14:17.285 --> 14:20.805
I think I can meet a market, demand here where a lot

14:20.805 --> 14:23.725
of people are listening to Nader and they want safer cars.

14:23.945 --> 14:26.645
So I'm gonna call my car a safety vehicle one,

14:26.665 --> 14:27.885
but I'm gonna make it really sexy.

14:28.265 --> 14:32.725
So in a lot of ways, the book, tries to kind of,

14:32.725 --> 14:34.645
draw our attention to the fact that, yes,

14:34.905 --> 14:37.045
for a long time people really loved cars,

14:37.065 --> 14:40.765
and they saw cars as, you know, magical pieces of technology

14:40.765 --> 14:42.965
that allowed them to bend time and space.

14:43.385 --> 14:45.125
But that there are a lot of problems

14:45.125 --> 14:46.285
that come along with the car.

14:46.545 --> 14:48.325
And that's one of the things that happens here,

14:48.615 --> 14:52.285
where there's a shift, in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s,

14:52.335 --> 14:54.645
where people start to realize that the problems caused

14:54.705 --> 14:58.045
by the car, especially the environmental problems,

14:58.065 --> 15:00.885
you know, the, the burning of fossil fuels means

15:00.885 --> 15:02.165
that the car is a real problem,

15:02.225 --> 15:03.525
and we've gotta solve it somehow.

15:03.945 --> 15:06.805
And this is where you get to the point where in the 1990s

15:06.805 --> 15:10.045
and two thousands and 2000 tens, they're looking

15:10.045 --> 15:13.125
for technological solutions like battery electric vehicles,

15:13.625 --> 15:16.605
and electric vehicles that will get rid of a lot

15:16.605 --> 15:19.245
of the key problems of the car, which is, you know,

15:19.245 --> 15:21.685
pollution and greenhouse, greenhouse gases

15:21.685 --> 15:22.685
and carbon dioxide,

15:22.825 --> 15:26.445
but will retain the benefits of the car, the ability

15:26.505 --> 15:29.365
to drive everywhere, the ability to kind of have

15:29.365 --> 15:33.085
that privacy, the ability to use the benefits of the car.

15:33.145 --> 15:36.605
So, the book is not really, a ha geography

15:36.605 --> 15:39.445
of the car as much as it is a way to use this one car

15:39.445 --> 15:42.285
to talk about the ha geography that existed about the car,

15:42.395 --> 15:43.925
some of the problems that emerged,

15:44.065 --> 15:48.405
and how people like Elon Musk and others.

15:48.465 --> 15:50.205
And, you know, Elon is in the book

15:50.205 --> 15:51.885
and, you know, he's got a lot of problems

15:51.885 --> 15:53.925
and he, there's a lot of criticism of Elon,

15:53.925 --> 15:56.565
but he does one thing that is a, a miracle.

15:56.755 --> 16:00.285
Like he, he, he shows us that someone can build

16:00.885 --> 16:03.165
electric vehicles and build enough of them,

16:03.215 --> 16:05.445
build them fast enough, build them safe enough

16:05.625 --> 16:06.685
to actually make money.

16:06.825 --> 16:08.205
And it changes the dynamic

16:08.705 --> 16:10.685
of the way the auto industry functions,

16:10.825 --> 16:13.565
but it also changes so much of society more generally,

16:13.565 --> 16:15.005
because we're all looking for

16:15.005 --> 16:16.485
that solution to climate change.

16:16.545 --> 16:19.685
And he provides one really key aspect of it.

16:19.915 --> 16:22.045
Despite all of his own problems

16:22.065 --> 16:24.245
and issues around his behavior

16:24.345 --> 16:26.805
and some of his management issues, he does something

16:26.805 --> 16:29.565
that nobody had done really since Henry Ford.

16:29.785 --> 16:31.325
And Malcolm Bricklin is an example

16:31.325 --> 16:32.645
of someone who tries to do it.

16:33.025 --> 16:36.285
He spends $30 million trying to build this car.

16:36.425 --> 16:38.845
He builds about 3000 of them, and then he goes bankrupt.

16:38.845 --> 16:41.165
And, and I also talk about, in the book,

16:41.205 --> 16:42.645
I talk about John DeLorean

16:42.645 --> 16:45.045
because there's so many parallels between the Back

16:45.045 --> 16:47.405
to the Future car, which also has gall wing doors,

16:47.665 --> 16:50.885
and the bricklin, and the parallels between these two.

16:51.025 --> 16:55.165
Uh, in terms of trying to achieve this,

16:56.185 --> 16:58.645
miracle of building cars, it's really, really hard

16:58.645 --> 17:01.765
to do, which is why so, so few companies do it,

17:02.065 --> 17:04.445
and so few people are successful at actually pulling off.

00:00 - This book came out because it's a pretty fascinating story on the face of it, about a guy who, who comes from the United States to New Brunswick to build a sports car with galling doors in the early 1970s. It's kind of unusual, but it did stem from some earlier work

00:15 - I had been doing, writing about the Canadian auto industry within a North American and global context. And I had known about the Bricklin incident, and I had used it as a small example. And I realized, Hey, this is such an unusual, compelling story. It really deserves its own fulsome tale. So I decided to write the book about it. And, I've, it's been a, a great ride, to be honest

00:37 - with you, because it's such an unusual tale. So the research was, a different, a few different types of methodologies, a lot of secondary writing because, it's the automotive industry in North America, and this was the only car, new car from a new car company that was built in North America between the 1940s and, the arrival of the Roadster by Tesla in 2008. There's a lot of secondary literature on it, and Malcolm Bricklin himself is

01:06 - a pretty interesting character. So there's lots of newspaper stories, but it's not just that. There are three documentaries on the Bricklin story. There is a musical play written about the Brickland story that was performed in New Brunswick. I did some interviews with Malcolm Brickland and I went to New Brunswick and checked out the scene as well. But it was a fun book to do research on,

01:26 - because there's been a lot, of, writing about it. And, you know, in the age of, digitization, there's so much material online. there's all kinds of interviews. There's all kinds of podcasts. You know, Jay Leno did an episode of one of his shows on the Bricklin in the Car. You can use that kind of material as part of your own research. So, really wide ranging,

01:48 - and eclectic, sources. I also, because it's the early 1970s, use, movies, poems, songs, the book has a playlist that's attached to it, which is a pretty fun playlist. And it includes everything from songs that were written about the bricklin at the time, to, David Bowie, to Bruce Springsteen, to Tracy Chapman songs about cars, effectively. 'cause it's a book about cars. So, yeah, because it's, a book about a car,

02:15 - and, you know, Automobility is the driving, kind of theme behind it. I'm using this, car as a vehicle, literally to kind of take a look at different aspects of North American history and society and how it was changing in the period between the 1940s and fifties, right up until today, especially around, ideas around industrial modernity, industrial post modernity. But it's, it's such a neat little, way of doing this,

02:40 - because I said to the reader, I say to the reader, you know, get behind the wheel of this car, and let's drive around and look at issues like, you know, entrepreneurship. Let's look at interest like issues like risk and safety, issues like, performance, showmanship, innovation, Sex, business, and all these different aspects. And, when I, I was realizing that I was writing the book that, you know, there's a narrative to the story about, the idea, behind the bricklin

03:08 - where this guy comes to New Brunswick. He is an American who, got, some success with bringing Subaru cars to North America. He's the first guy to bring Subaru cars to North America. And then he decides, I'm gonna put this money into build my own amazing, sexy sports car with gall wing doors. and it's kind of such a, a, a, a unique card, a unique story. I thought I'd use that and say, Hey, in terms of the structure of the book, you can literally get

03:33 - behind the wheel of the SV one and go to different spots along these, aspects of automobility. So I said, you know, I'll tell you the, the, the story upfront, which is, he comes to New Brunswick, the government of New Brunswick gives him $25 million to build the car. They build 3000, it goes bankrupt. It causes a pretty big scandal because it's a lot of taxpayer money.

03:56 - It's a lot like the DeLorean and what happens in Northern Ireland just about a decade later. but, you know, that's just one aspect of it. When you use the car to talk about different aspects of society that are changing because the auto industry and Automobility is so central to North American identity, and in some ways global identity and the way we think about aspects of capitalism, oil, geopolitics, you know, the automobile

04:24 - as a landscape shaping, agent of change, you know, from railways to how we make our houses, I thought it was a great way to kind of just get by in the wheel of the car. And the reader can jump around, from chapter to chapter. They don't have to go through the book in a particular order if they wanna just drive straight to the chapter on sex and look at, excuse me, and look at how, I use the bricklin to talk about the impact of automobility on sex and gender.

04:51 - They can do so, and they don't miss a beat in terms of learning about the broader story. So the automobile and the automobile industry is often referred to as capitalism's favorite child. The industry of industries, I mean, it's the biggest business. It's the most important business. I mean, anybody who's listening knows who Elon Musk is. They know about the impact of automobility

05:10 - and this, dramatic change that we're going through from the internal combustion engine to the electric vehicle. Well, in the 20th century, auto mo's, automotive was really the biggest business and the leading capitalists that we kind of portray as icons of capitalism, whether it's Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler, or Henry Ford ii or Lee I Koka, or, Alfred Sloan or Elon Musk. These are all examples of some

05:37 - of the leading capitalist figures of our time. And they're connected to the auto industry because the auto industry has such a profound change. people always talk about creative destruction as a, a way that capitalism really reshapes the world and the landscape. Well, there's no more creative, creative destruction agent than the automobile. So, from Henry Ford to Malcolm Brickland to Elon Musk, I use the car and these entrepreneurs

06:03 - and leading capitalists to talk about how automobility and entrepreneurship and capitalism are all interconnected. And that, you know, the automobile becomes kind of like a vehicle of, of change within capitalism, and such a profound agent of change in reshaping the world. I mean, I, I, I go back to this pretty often, but between Henry Ford, who often is credited as being, the most important capitalist in, you know, American, if not global history in the last couple hundred of years, all the way to Elon Musk, who's often kind of seen as a,

06:36 - an a 21st century analog of Henry Ford. You can't get past, the auto industry, if you're gonna talk about capitalism and just how much of a impact it's had. And it's not just about the cars and the way they shape our world. I mean, the auto industry has had a profound impact upon, distribution, supply chain, marketing, advertising, innovation, cross border trade, tariffs. There's so many aspects that are tied up in automotive,

07:06 - and, and any, anybody who's listening wherever they are in the world thinks about, you know, that car industry that might be in their country or not in their country. and the way that the automobile sector plays such a huge role. And one of the, one of the things I often talk about is I say, especially in North America, you know, in a lot of small towns, the largest single employer usually is an auto dealer, and it dominates the kind

07:28 - of economic landscape. But if you go from that, and you think about the car companies and the manufacturing facilities, the factories that are so important in terms of employment and investment and the way they can shape the fate of towns or a whole regions, it's pretty profound. I mean, in the UK for instance, they're going through a pretty big transition right now where the auto industry is under a lot of pressure.

07:51 - Whether or not it continues to exist is gonna have a profound impact for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. So, automobility and capitalism are kind of hand in hand, and they are impossible to separate. And, that's one of the great things about this book, even though it's about an obscure car company that's, in, in New Brunswick, Canada in the 1970s, it speaks

08:16 - to broader issues that you can really read into. So, cars and sex also go hand in hand in a weird way, because, you know, before, the automobile arrived and, really, reshaped and created modernity, you know, most of society lived a, a rural agricultural existence. And that had a pretty profound impact, not just on, relationships and sex and marriage and dating, but it really did, determine the kind of scope and scale of how people met each other.

08:47 - It was local, it was rural. people got together because they were in, marriages that were often arranged depending upon Financial or religious or ethnic or racial status, because everybody was localized in small towns, even in cities, it was pretty close. Well, the car completely changes that because it allows people to go further afield to meet people, and it gives them privacy and speed.

09:13 - So for the first time, starting in the 1900, you see this idea of dating a peer, where people will show up at a place or meet someone, they'll get into a car together, and it allows their relationships to occur no longer under the watchful eye of parents or chaperones or neighbors. They can go and drive to a lover's lane or a blueberry hill. And it's not just that it gets them away from parents. They now have a little private space that they can do things

09:40 - with and do things in you, you start to see the emergence of, motor hotels, motels, which are other places where people can drive to. So the car really changes, not just the act of sex. And I have lots of examples in the book. In the 1910s and 1920s, there's all these judges who are railing against automobiles saying, my God, this is a, a a a a, a wagon, a sex wagon. It becomes like a brothel on wheels. There's all these crimes that are related to this.

10:06 - You know, Henry Ford shortens the length of the seats in the Model T because he finds out people are using Model Ts to, you know, have relationships, and he doesn't like this idea. So it changes the dynamics of, sexuality and relationships and gender as well, because, you know, this is an arrow where, the emergence of, women's rights suffrage is happening at the same time that the car is appearing.

10:33 - And this idea about, you know, whether women should drive or not, is actually something that happens. And obviously, women become drivers. It changes the dynamic of the equality of genders. And it also really, becomes the kind of shorthand for understanding how we see gender and gender relationships, because automobiles are seen initially as a kind of male dominated public sphere. Women start to get into it. But women are often seen as being, you know, ornamental

11:00 - or secondary to the idea of cars that women are, you know, oftentimes portrayed as cars. The Ford Model t its first big nickname is the Tin Lizzie. It's anthropomorphized as a female. And you start to see a kind of connection between how we see cars and automobiles, and how sex kind of plays a big role in that, not just the way cars look, but the way they're marketed and sold. And this is where the Bricklin comes in,

11:27 - in 1973 when Malcolm Bricklin launches, this car. It's right at the, you know, right after the, sexual revolution of the 19 sex sixties is really erupted. So you start to see examples of sexy cars, pony cars, like the Mustang or the Corvette, and there's a kind of connection between the sexuality, the explicit sexuality of cars as a way to sell cars, but also as a way of, people seeing themselves as an image of a driver.

11:57 - So people, males especially buy sexy cars because it, it makes them feel like they're gonna be more sexually potent. And this is something that Malcolm Bricklin really explicitly talks about. When he designs the car, he says, I want it to be a sexy car. I want it to be something that, guys would buy because they would, you know, feel good about themselves. In the book, I talk about how he,

12:19 - he'd get letters from people who would say, Mr. Bricklin, thank you for building this car. You know, I never got laid before I bought a bricklin, and now I have, you know, women throwing myself, throwing themselves at me because of this. So, I mean, it's a bit crude, and it really speaks to the kind of gender roles and the continuing gender roles that exist. But it shows you just how connected automobility is to sex. Not just having sex

12:43 - and finding, private places to have sex and go away to have sex, but the fact that cars themselves are seen as artifacts of sexuality and gender as well. So, I wouldn't call it an ode to the automobile in the sense that I do use the car to talk about the tremendous impact that Automobility has had, but I'm, I'm just as critical. I, I talk about some of the changes that have gone on between the 1950s and 1960s when, you know, that's the kind of height,

13:10 - the zenith of a post-war automobility, where you have, you know, big cars with tail fins, and there's all kinds of, kind of culture of cars where people aren't that questioning about it. And then by the time you get to the sixties and seventies, people are starting to question the car. They're saying, Hey, look, it's got environmental consequences. It's got pollution consequences. You know, there's all these cars that are risky.

13:32 - They, you know, there's accidents that people die in cars. There's a lot of problems with cars. And one of the things that happens in, with Bricklin is he tries to see his car as a way to solve some of these problems. So even though it's a sexy sports car with gull wings, that looks like, almost like a Corvette, he calls it a safety vehicle, because he's really kind of jumping off the,

13:54 - safety revolution that sparked by Ralph Nader in the 1960s, where Rader Nader, you know, he, he accuses a Detroit of being really kind of like uncaring about customers. You know, they don't build safe cars. They don't have seat belts in their cars. They don't have collapsible steering wheels, they don't have safety proof glass. You know, cars are really dangerous. And, Brickland says, you know what? I think I can meet a market, demand here where a lot

14:20 - of people are listening to Nader and they want safer cars. So I'm gonna call my car a safety vehicle one, but I'm gonna make it really sexy. So in a lot of ways, the book, tries to kind of, draw our attention to the fact that, yes, for a long time people really loved cars, and they saw cars as, you know, magical pieces of technology that allowed them to bend time and space. But that there are a lot of problems that come along with the car.

14:46 - And that's one of the things that happens here, where there's a shift, in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, where people start to realize that the problems caused by the car, especially the environmental problems, you know, the, the burning of fossil fuels means that the car is a real problem, and we've gotta solve it somehow. And this is where you get to the point where in the 1990s and two thousands and 2000 tens, they're looking for technological solutions like battery electric vehicles,

15:13 - and electric vehicles that will get rid of a lot of the key problems of the car, which is, you know, pollution and greenhouse, greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide, but will retain the benefits of the car, the ability to drive everywhere, the ability to kind of have that privacy, the ability to use the benefits of the car. So, the book is not really, a ha geography of the car as much as it is a way to use this one car to talk about the ha geography that existed about the car,

15:42 - some of the problems that emerged, and how people like Elon Musk and others. And, you know, Elon is in the book and, you know, he's got a lot of problems and he, there's a lot of criticism of Elon, but he does one thing that is a, a miracle. Like he, he, he shows us that someone can build electric vehicles and build enough of them, build them fast enough, build them safe enough to actually make money.

16:06 - And it changes the dynamic of the way the auto industry functions, but it also changes so much of society more generally, because we're all looking for that solution to climate change. And he provides one really key aspect of it. Despite all of his own problems and issues around his behavior and some of his management issues, he does something that nobody had done really since Henry Ford.

16:29 - And Malcolm Bricklin is an example of someone who tries to do it. He spends $30 million trying to build this car. He builds about 3000 of them, and then he goes bankrupt. And, and I also talk about, in the book, I talk about John DeLorean because there's so many parallels between the Back to the Future car, which also has gall wing doors, and the bricklin, and the parallels between these two. in terms of trying to achieve this,

16:56 - miracle of building cars, it's really, really hard to do, which is why so, so few companies do it, and so few people are successful at actually pulling off.

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