Car

A car is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation and a product of the automotive industry.

See also: transport

Quotes

I think cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. ~ Roland Barthes

Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekend exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home? ~ Stanisław Lem

• I think cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
  • Roland Barthes, The New Citroën, (1957)

• Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology.
  • Jean Baudrillard, America (1988), pp. 9-10

• In Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.
  • George Carlin, Brain Droppings, (1998).

• The best British cars are Italian.
  • Colin Chapman, radio interview to the BBC, ca. 1958

• Ferraris are art, but they love being driven.
  • Chris Evans, British presenter and DJ. Live magazine, the Mail on Sunday (UK) newspaper, 29th November 2009

• ... America aims at having a car for every citizen. I do not. I want freedom for full expression of my personality.
  • Mahatma Gandhi in Jews and Palestine (July 1946), as quoted in The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings, p. 327

• Nine-tenths of our crimes an' calamities are made possible by th' automobile. It has unleashed all th' pent-up criminal tendencies o' th' ages. It's th' central figure in murders, hold-ups, burglaries, accidents, elopements, failures an' abscondments. It has well nigh jimmed th' American home.... No girl is missin' that wuzn' last seen steppin' in a strange automobile.... An' ther hain't a day rolls by that somebuddy hain't sellin' ther sewin' machine, or ther home, or somethin' t' pay on an automobile.... Maybe th' jails an' workhouses are empty, but that's not because th' world is gittin' better. It's because all th' criminals escape in automobiles.
  • Kin Hubbard writing for his character, "th' Hon. Ex.-Editur Cale Fluhart."
    Quoted in Norris W. Yeats, The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century, Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1964, p. 107.

• Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekend exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?
  • Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1974), p. 136 in the Harcourt edition, ISBN 978-0-15-634040-3

• Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors. It's the only way to live, in cars.
  • Gary Numan, "Cars" (August 1979), The Pleasure Principle (September 1979), United Kingdom: Beggars Banquet Records

• When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
  • Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as quoted in "48 of Prince Philip's greatest gaffes and funny moments", The Telegraph (2 August 2017)

• The problem with traffic is that the people of today are driving the cars of tomorrow on the roads of yesterday.
  • Bob Talbert, Detroit Free Press, ca. 1987

See also

• Motorsport
• Plug-in hybrid