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Car

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Automobiles are like people: the cheap ones are noisy. ~ E. W. Howe

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

See also: transport


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. ~ George Will
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 geezer car should be as large as possible. If a fighter jet can't land on it, you don't want to drive it. ~ Dave Barry
Like gun deaths, this epidemic of car-related deaths is a particularly American problem. Other countries have car deaths too, of course. But among developed and prosperous nations, America stands out in the fact that our proportion of vehicle deaths have gone up since 2010, while they’ve gone down in most of our peer nations, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). According to a report from the Governors Highway Safety Association, 2022 saw the largest number of pedestrians killed in America in more than 40 years. ~ Jill Filipovic
Tall trucks and SUVs with blunt hoods are particularly dangerous — 45% more likely to kill pedestrians compared to smaller vehicles with sloped front ends, according to research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. ~ Jill Filipovic
Our interest in your Rolls-Royce car does not cease when you take delivery of the car. It is our ambition that every purchaser of a Rolls-Royce car shall continue to be more than satisfied. ~ Rolls-Royce Limited
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
1998 Chevrolet Prizm
1998 Chevrolet Corvette C5 at Hatfield Heath Festival 2017

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B

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  • 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.
  • The geezer car should be as large as possible. If a fighter jet can't land on it, you don't want to drive it. If necessary, you should get two cars and have them welded together. You should grip the steering wheel tightly enough that you cannot be detached from it without a surgical procedure, and you should sit way down in the seat so you're looking directly ahead at the speedometer. You should select a speed in advance- 23 miles per hour is very popular- and drive this speed at all times, regardless of whether you're in your driveway or on the interstate. Always come to a full stop when you notice a Potentially Hazardous Road Condition such as an intersection or a store or a sidewalk or a tree. If you're planning to make a turn at any point during the trip, you should plan ahead by putting your blinker on as soon as you start the car. Never park the car without making a minimum of seventeen turns.
    • Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns 40 (1990). New York: Crown Publishers, p. 177-178
  • Ford then embarked on a brief but successful career as a racing driver. Victory in a race at Grosse Point brought him sufficient kudos for a second company, the Henry Ford Motor Company, founded just seven weeks later. Many invested who had already lost money financing the Detroit Automobile Company. The intention — of he backers at least — was to start making a car based on the one which had been responsible for Ford's famous racing victory. Yet only four months later, Ford was asked to leave and offered a severance payment of $900. The company was renamed the Cadillac Automobile Company and manufactured a car according to Ford's design, but with a single, rather than a two-cylinder motor. After 1909, as part of General Motors, Ford's arch rivals in later years, Cadillac became one of America's most prestigious makes of motor car — the exact opposite of the reputation Ford motor cars later acquired.
  • 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.
  • Everyone with no car, wants to buy it. And anyone who has a car, wants to sell it. And he doesn't do it just because he will stay without a car.
  • You know, when I was sixteen I was only thinking about two things: cars and girls ... I wasn't very good with girls so that kind of narrowed it down a little bit. ... Although if you had the right car, it helped with girls, too. ... I mean, Americans love cars ... They are loving their cars. And, it all started here, too. ... There is really nothing more quintessentially American than the car.

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  • 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.
  • Then there's power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It's almost impossible to buy a car that won't do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.) Then there's the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today's Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Saab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That's true, that is.
  • Fast, truly exciting cars are being killed off so that pretty soon the officers will all be gone, leaving us with a field full of enlisted men.
  • And therein lies the reason why motor industry people don't fawn on journalists. They're in the hot seat, deciding who gets to drive what and who gets to go where. Why should they grovel when they know that without their assistance the motoring journalist is up the creek without a boat, nevermind a paddle?

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  • Tall trucks and SUVs with blunt hoods are particularly dangerous — 45% more likely to kill pedestrians compared to smaller vehicles with sloped front ends, according to research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Some of these trucks and SUVs are so tall that the top of the hood aims squarely at the upper torso and neck of the average American woman.
    The risks become fairly obvious when you think it through: If you’re an average-sized adult hit by a sedan, you’re likely going to be hit in the legs or perhaps the pelvis. If you’re hit by a large truck or SUV, though, you’re hit in the torso, or even head and neck. And the driver may not even be able to see what they’ve hit.
    Small children become invisible to the driver when they stand in front of these extra-large vehicles. Hundreds of American children have been killed off of public roadways by forward-moving vehicles, most of them trucks or SUVs — in other words, often run over by a driver who simply couldn’t see them beyond the hood.
  • Trucks and SUVs today are also significantly heavier than they used to be, with the average truck ballooning 34% in weight since 1990. That’s especially bad news for any pedestrians, motorcyclists or cyclists they hit. They’re also vastly more popular, accounting at multiple points in recent years for 80% of new car sales in the US, according to JD Power data cited in a comprehensive look at ever-larger vehicles in Slate.
  • The longstanding perception that bigger cars are safer is bolstered by vehicle safety ratings which look at the safety of the drivers and passengers, but don’t take into account the dangers any given vehicle poses to pedestrians, something European regulators consider. And these larger, heavier cars are harder on roads, which we all pay to maintain.

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  • But Cayce sees that there is a Michelin Man within her field of vision, its white, bloated, maggot−like form perched on the edge of a dealer's counter, about thirty feet away. It is about two feet tall, and is probably meant to be illuminated from within. The Michelin Man was the first trademark to which she exhibited a phobic reaction. She had been six.

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  • Automobiles are like people: the cheap ones are noisy.
    • E. W. Howe, Country Town Sayings: A collection of paragraphs from the Atchison Globe (1911), p. 201.
  • 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.
  • Driving enthusiasts rejoice. Volkswagen will ditch its screen-happy control interfaces in favor of old-fashioned physical controls beginning with its next generation of electric cars, company design chief Andreas Mindt told Autocar. Why? Well, as popular and versatile as touchscreen interfaces are, they ignore one important fact: It’s not an iPhone.
    “We will never, ever make this mistake any more. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this,” Mindt told the publication. “Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car.”
    I really couldn’t have put it better myself. And while VW’s touchscreens won’t be going anywhere, they will be joined by tactile controls for the audio volume, heating and cooling, and the hazard light, said Mindt. “They will be in every car that we make from now on. We understood this,” he added, citing both critical and customer feedback. Cars will need to leave real estate for screens to accommodate nav systems and mandatory reverse cameras, but no longer at the expense of having dedicated knobs and buttons for these critical functions.

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  • Not a single pedestrian has run over a car yet, but for some reason motorists are still unhappy.
    • Ещё ни один пешеход не задавил автомобиля, тем не менее недовольны почему-то автомобилисты.
    • Ilya Ilf, Notebooks, 1930s (Илья Ильф. Из записных книжек. — Ленинград: «Художник РСФСР», 1966, с. 65)

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  • Contemporary man has tried to substitute the car for the cow pony, but it simply doesn't work. True, in a car he is mobile, and once behind the wheel he can feel the excitement of command, but nevertheless the car is bound to the road, inhibited by traffic, and frustrated by regulations essential to his safety but which he often feels rob him of the true freedom he wants.
  • 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?

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  • [J]umped out of bed and put on my best suit, got in my car and raced like a jet all the way to you.

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  • 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

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  • A car is a vehicle that moves due to the explosive combustion of gasoline in the engine and stops for some unknown reason. (Rojek's Auto Dictionary)
    • Samochód — pojazd który rusza dzięki spalaniu się (eksplozjom) benzyny w silniku, a zatrzymuje się nie wiadomo dlaczego. (Rojek's Auto Dictionary)
    • Myśli ludzi wielkich, średnich oraz psa Fafika (Thoughts from Great People, Average People, and from Fafik the Dog). Przekrój magazine, Nr. 939-940, 1963, P. 17
  • In the old days, a car traveling at 25 km/h caused everyone to be amazed. And it still does. (from the I Was Mercedes Tire)
    • Gdy stawiał pierwsze kroki, samochód który jechał 25 km na godzinę budził powszechne zdumienie. I dziś budzi. (z "Byłam oponą mercedesa")
    • Myśli ludzi wielkich, średnich oraz psa Fafika. Przekrój magazine, Nr. 995, 1964, P. 8
  • Remember, there might be a bigger idiot than you in that other car. (from Be Caruso of a Steering Wheel)
    • Pamiętaj, że w tym drugim samochodzie może być większy idiota od Ciebie. (z Bądź Carusem sterówki)
    • Myśli ludzi wielkich, średnich oraz psa Fafika. Przekrój magazine, Nr. 844, 1962, P. 12
  • Every 17 minutes a car hits one person. Poor guy! (Krecia Pataczkówna)
    • Co 17 minut samochód najeżdża na jednego człowieka. Biedny facet! (Krecia Pataczkówna)
    • Myśli ludzi wielkich, średnich oraz psa Fafika. Przekrój magazine, Nr. 945, 1963, P. 9

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  • Our interest in your Rolls-Royce car does not cease when you take delivery of the car. It is our ambition that every purchaser of a Rolls-Royce car shall continue to be more than satisfied.
    • Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I Handbook (1955-1958), p. 14

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W

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  • Looking out a dirty old window; down below the cars in the city go rushing by. I sit here alone and I wonder why.
  • Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
  • You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. But you won’t make it, of course. <…>
But if you wake up in time and don’t hook your wheel off the slab, you’ll go whipping on into the dazzle and now and then a car will come at you steady out of the dazzle and will pass you with a snatching sound as though God-Almighty had ripped a tin roof loose with his bare hands. Way off ahead of you, at the horizon where the cotton fields are blurred into the light, the slab will glitter and gleam like water, as though the road were flooded. You'll go whipping toward it, but it will always be ahead of you, that bright, flooded place, like a mirage. You'll go past the litde white metal squares set on metal rods, with the skull and crossbones on them to mark the spot. For this is the country where the age of the internal combustion engine has come into its own. Where every boy is Barney Oldfield, and the girls wear organdy and batiste and eyelet embroidery and no panties on account of the climate and have smooth little faces to break your heart and when the wind of the car's speed lifts up their hair at the temples you see the sweet little beads of perspiration nestling there, and they sit low in the seat with their little spines crooked and their bent knees high toward the dashboard and not too close together for the cool, if you could call it that, from the hood ventilator. Where the smell of gasoline and burning brake bands and red-eye is sweeter than myrrh. Where the eight-cylinder jobs come roaring round the curves in the red hills and scatter the gravel like spray, and when they ever get down in the flat country and hit the new slab, God have mercy on the mariner.

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  • The only way to clip the wings of the speed maniac is to furnish him with a truck that is geared for low or moderate speed and in which the power is limited, that is to say, furnish him with an electric truck. As an economic feature in the transportation of goods, the electric truck would long ago have secured the dominating position, but for the foolish notion some have derived from the gas car craze that high speed and power are essential to the moving of goods.

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See also

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  • Encyclopedic article on Car on Wikipedia
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