In Orchestrating Automobile Technology: Comfort, Mobility Culture, and the Construction of the “Family Touring Car,” 1917–1940.“ Gijs Mom presents a concise history of the ways in which sound becomes an important element of car design. This essay outlines the development of a closed car, and a clear timeline of how specific elements of car design were preferred over others throughout the 1920-40s. The essay also discusses the ways in which car culture and design influence one another, with car owners preferring to own cars that could be used to travel around the country and ones that both enabled and projected specific lifestyles. Notions of cars being cheaper than commuting by train or bus as well as them being desirable as a protective social 'cocoon' led to designs where the outside world was inhibited and a personal comfort space was created.

Mom's history presents a starting moment of when sound design in automobiles began and in which ways those design principles are relevant to the car culture. This proceeds to define the relation to sound we have today. The early history of car marketing and lingo really reinforced this idea with many aspects of the car sound being referenced and discussed with musical terms. This essay is an authoritative resource both in its construction of early car sound design as well as its introduction to many sources around the ways cars were being thought of and talked about. This writing has a remarkable amount of primary sources and is pulling from a large amount of early information on car sound, which are less present in the further essays discussed here. It is useful to have these primary sources contextualized as well and sets the topic in history starting with the creation of the closed car. In Towards a Cultural History of Car Sound(s) Stefan Krebs takes a survey into existing writing about car sound, from the perspective of history as well as from the field of sound studies. He details that most of the study about car sound has to do with two main topics, the reduction and control of sound in cars and the development of an individualistic car culture. This includes the development of quiet cars as well as the development of radio in cars, something that only becomes well developed after being able to reduce how loud the car is while driving. Krebs also details the ways in which research has been dedicated to the ways in which car culture has developed with predominant themes of 'cocooning' and 'sonic envelopes' both of these have to do with the development of private aural spaces. Lastly there is an observation made that there is little research being done around the act of listening in relation to cars, little research is being done about the sounds cars make, rather than about how to reduce it. He notes that the largest complaint about urban noise is car noise, and it represents the greatest need for creating better sonic ecosystems.

This essay ends at the development of electric cars, which addresses many of the above complaints mentioned. Additionally the observations about sonic space and how car noises are frequently artificially generated (even on electric vehicles) is a very interesting continuation of the themes of car sounds being designed. It is informative to see critical discussion of the lack of insight specifically about sound and cars without an industry oriented goal in mind. This criticism sets up useful academic discussions of the relationships the car industry has to the sonic landscape of urban spaces. In Crossroads: The Automobile, Rock and Roll and Democracy E. L. Widmer presents a history of car references in rock and roll music. The theme of cars is a dominant theme in rock and roll with it being a key element of the freedom and lifestyle the genre presents. The history of car references are traced back prior to rock and roll to Blues music and the ways in which black musicians discuss the Ford motor company and the relations black workers had to the production and symbology of black cars. Rock and roll continues this connection with cars being emblematic of a lifestyle with Cadillac cars being compared to women and are emblematic of an idealized post WWII lifestyle. The parallels to sex and beauty are embedded in the metaphors common in rock and roll music. The essay ends by discussing Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and how they lived out the lifestyle they presented in their music, both owning many cars throughout their careers. Both also outwardly presented their cars as status symbols of being successful musicians.

This history presents an interesting moment in post war America where the dominant music was presented to lower class individuals with a forward thinking mentality of upward mobility. This is represented by presenting a car dependent lifestyle that was synonymous with freedom and was a cultural ideal at that moment in history. This relationship generated strong brand and aesthetic relationships, with the Cadillac frequently being openly presented as an ideal for presenting yourself as successful in life. Ownership of a Cadillac is also presented as sexually desirable, which further enhanced its appeal with young males who were one of the main listeners to rock and roll music.

This is an important contextualization of the ways the cars engage with culture. This is an important additional point of discussion as music plays a pivotal role in the active designing of car culture. There are also many ways that nostalgia and music from the mid century intertwine to even influence car design today. One of the major introductions of cars in culture was this music and it was the beginnings of integrating cars into people's images of self and the ways they have come to represent an aspirational element of lifestyle.

In America’s Love Affair with the Automobile in the Television Age Karal Ann Marling presents a specific perspective on the car, one that is visual construction designed to engage the senses, this is the car of the television age. Throughout the 1950 to the 1980s cars were mainly marketed through television, an object to be looked at, and the esthetics of cars are largely affected by this shift. Again the Cadillac is center in the discussion, presenting a vibrant pink car, with chrome accouterments that is made to look like a piece of aviation technology. The importance of aviation is predominant in the design, though largely just for looks the cars were represented as aerodynamic and plane like, a metaphor for the ways they drive smoothly and 'fly' across the landscape when driven. These design elements affected every aspect of the car, from its shape and color, the use of chrome to the sound and ways that people envisioned themselves in them.

This essay presents cars as pieces of artwork. It discusses the idea that cars were marketed on circular pedestals and rotated for viewers to experience at car shows, but this action had no resemblance to the act of driving them. This really gets at the idea that cars are not being presented even as something that someone drives, arguably the primary point, but instead something to be looked at and experienced. This shift in design seems to correlate with the increase in sound design, where the elements of a car's sound have less to do with the mechanical function but instead more to do with the idealization of what people want them to sound like.

Like E. L. Widmer’s above essay on rock and roll, contextualizes cars in music culture of the mid 20th century; this essay does a good job contextualizing cars as visual symbols. This is an important interplay, as both pose striking opportunities to influence culture in different ways and both reveal the degree of active design and marketing happening with cars. Additionally an interplay begins to become very apparent, where a feedback loop is present in consumer markets. The sounds and images that people experience of cars has a feedback effect on the kinds of cars they then purchase and own and the cycle continues.

In Cars and Films in American Culture, 1929-1959 Kenneth Hey Charts the parallels in the early film and car industries, cars and film had intense links. Cars enabled the film industry, with cars being the primary means that viewers went to the theater, and in the case of drive-in theaters, the primary way to experience them. The escapism of film and cars are interlinked, with the ability for audiences to escape the sounds and engagement with the outside world, experiencing the sound of air conditioning and radio more than the local environment. This presents car owners with a view of the world where the outside world is ugly and bothersome and this feeds back into the escapism of film.

The implications of an isolated interior space in a car are interesting. This essay reinforces this idea in the ways this manifests in film. Presenting Star Wars as 'hot rods in space' has important elements of 'cocooning' described earlier, and the theme of isolation is pivotal to these connotations. The sense of an escape from the outside world, in the case of space, with the literal silence of the outside is an informative metaphor for the idealized sonic space of a car. All three of the above essays take a bite out of various aspects of mid century American culture and all say strikingly similar things, that the car is a pivotal part of the development and proliferation of those cultures. Again there is a sense of a feedback loop, where the car enables these industries and in turn enables further development of the car.

Mom, Gijs. “Orchestrating Automobile Technology: Comfort, Mobility Culture, and the Construction of the “Family Touring Car,” 1917–1940.” Technology and Culture, vol. 55 no. 2, 2014, p. 299-325. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2014.0054.

Krebs, Stefan. “Towards a Cultural History of Car Sound(s).” Mobility in History. Reviews and reflections, edited by Peter Norton et al. (2011). Neuchâtel: Editions Alphil (=T2M Yearbook 2012), 151–156, https://www.academia.edu/12745558/Towards_a_Cultural_History_of_Car_Sound_s_

Widmer, E. L. “Crossroads: The Automobile, Rock and Roll and Democracy.” Autopia : Cars and Culture. Wollen, Peter, and Joe Kerr. Reaktion Books, 2002. p. 65-75

Marling, Karal Ann. “America’s Love Affair with the Automobile in the Television Age.” Design Quarterly, no. 146, 1989, pp. 5–20. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/4091226. Accessed 28 Aug. 2024.

Hey, Kenneth. “Cars and Films in American Culture, 1929-1959.” Lewis, David Lanier, and Laurence Goldstein. The Automobile and American culture. University of Michigan Press, 1983. p.193-205