If Henry Ford’s vision had prevailed 75 years ago, says Joseph B. White in The Wall Street Journal this week, Americans might all be driving latter-day versions of the Model T—practical, inexpensive conveyances designed to get us from here to there. But Ford lost out to the concept pioneered by General Motors (and later given a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen): the car as an expression of power and beauty and personality—freedom molded into metal. Today, if Americans didn’t see cars as projections of their essential selves, we could all be driving vehicles getting 40 or 50 mpg, and we could tell the Saudis, Iranians, and Venezuelans where to stick their oil. – William Falk, Editor-in-Chief, The Week Magazine
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