Some Impressions of the '58 Cars

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
November 9, 1957


   I AM as susceptible to the allure of the long, low, two-tone job as anyone but as I scan the assortment of '58 automobiles I wonder how much more of this allure we can take before widening the streets, resetting the parking meters and being forced to crawl aboard on all fours.
   For several years now, fellows with stiff backs have experienced difficulty getting in and out of cars and the situation keeps worsening as the designers get 'em nearer and nearer the ground.

   THE CAR of yesterday was a poor thing by comparison but it had some merit. You could get into it without knocking your hat off and could travel a country road without fear that a four-inch stump would shear off the oil pan.
   On the mountain driving I once knew, today's car would be as useless as a hobby horse. All its oil would be deposited on hummocks this side of the first rise.
   A veterinarian I know, who must drive over all sorts of roads, is happy enough when his new car is on pavement, which it is built for, but is torn by anxiety when it isn't. "Too low," he complains. "They don't build cars for this kind of country. Since September I've knocked off the crank-case twice."

   THE OLD Model T was as good as anything ever devised for rugged, high-crown terrain and, up until he died a few years ago my father-in-law vowed it was as good as anything anywhere. This was because he never drove anything but a Model T, but he was not one to let a thing like this keep him from passing emphatic judgment.
   The closer to horse-and-buggy transportation a car was the better he liked it. When the self-starter was first introduced he branded it a fad that would never catch on. And he had no time whatever for the foot accelerator. You needed your feet for the clutch, brake and reverse pedals, he maintained, and the gas lever belonged on the steering post.

   MY OWN father was of much the same mind. A graduate of the Model T school of chauffeuring, where his grades were mediocre, he found shifting gears senseless and baffling. Only after he'd run through a couple of fences, wound up in numerous irrigation ditches and bowed out the back wall of the garage did he finally wake up. And even then he never shifted into high unless prompted. Second gear seemed adequate. He readily accepted the self-starter, however, having spun enough cranks in cold weather to be sick of the chore.

   But neither of the above-mentioned gentlemen would have accepted today's car, with its myriad buttons, dials, lights and automatic transmission, for a minute. And only a madman would allow such characters behind the wheel of one.

   AT THE RATE automobiles are changing, in some near tomorrow nobody will allow me at the controls of one. I'm at the point where I, too, accept change ungraciously and am forever amazed at the flow of mechanical innovations and varieties of appearance. I cling to the hope that one day the engineers and designers will say, "Here is the ultimate automobile. It can't be any better. To hell with model changes. We'll stick to this one."
   The ultimate automobile, if the trend continues, will be as long as a freight car and the backseat driver will not be a nuisance but a necessity. He will be needed to turn the rear wheels so the behemoth can negotiate corners hook-and-ladder style. Already you court heart failure getting one of today's long babies into the clear at a parking lot. Unless you have power steering, this is a job for the young and vigorous.
   The one development that might arrest the make-'em-longer mania is the emergence of the sports car. This little fellow may be lacking in room and comfort but it demands only a fraction of the road and the space between parking meters is ample.

   BUT GRIPING aside, only a chronic sourpuss could wish for anything but a brisk market for the '58 cars. Our economy rides with them. Their plants give jobs to three quarters of a million workers and the living of millions of others is tied to the auto manufacturer's prosperity--salesmen and servicemen, parts and equipment makers, those who produce and sell gas and oil, steel makers, highway and bridge builders.
   I see where one in every seven U.S. workers owes his job to the automotive field. The figure would be even more impressive if they counted the carpenters busy lengthening garages.


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