University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

Formula For A Best Seller

If anyone is looking for a can't-miss
formula for a best-selling
book, I offer with due modesty and
without reservation the following
suggestion: a fat polemic describing
everything wrong with the
automobile. It would of course, be
a natural for Martin Mayer, and he
would probably call it (after The
Lawyers and The Schools) The Car.

The Preface, in fine polemical
fashion, would quickly summarize
the good things about the car; that
it is rapid personal transportation
and a convenient place to sleep
when you don't want to pay for a
motel.

Indictment

The remainder of the book
however would be a multi-point
indictment of the car and especially
appropriate in this newly-dawned
Age of Ecology.

Chapter I would describe the
incredible waste of personalized
transportation: 200-300
horsepower and as many cubic feet
of car to carry a 150 pound person;
car after car running from suburb
to city and back again each day
when mass transportation could
carry the same people — and more
— with much less cost and
equipment.

Chapter II, especially directed to
big cars, would describe how the
waste described in Chapter I is
compounded as the car gets bigger.
I remember one summer, after
driving jeeps and sports cars,
suddenly jumping into a big Ford
and driving through the narrow
streets of North Adams, Mass.,
maneuvering the veritable tug-boat
through the traffic, barely missing
everything, and suddenly it struck
me just how silly these
monstrosities were.

Chapter III would describe how
the presence of cars makes it so
easy — too easy to avoid walking,
even for short distances. A college
friend of mine would drive his
Oldsmobile to class — less than the
equivalent of three blocks away.
The suggestion by Stu Pape and
others to abolish cars on the
Grounds and establish permanent
busing is an attractive idea.

Chapter IV would show how the
car is the bane of good planning —
how it invites us to pave the
landscape with parking lots, often
tearing down historic buildings to
make way. Isn't the Barracks Road
Shopping Center — nearly devoid of
greenery — a dreary desert of black
top and shops? Worse, to be sure, is
the almighty traffic flow which
inspires the highway lobbies to urge
the building of more and more
freeways which break up more and
more neighborhoods, fill downtown
with more and more cars, and
absorb more and more public
monies that could be better spent
elsewhere (including on mass
transportation). The citizens of
Washington D.C. can speak well to
the latter point.

Pollution

Chapter V would discuss the
exhaust pollution which, when the
winds don't remove it, becomes a
poisonous cloud over a whole urban
area which causes death through
respiratory diseases. This chapter,
of course, would also discuss the
pollution of noise which makes
walking in the city so unpleasant.

Chapter VI would discuss the
even greater danger of cars — the
carnage of highway accidents.
Supported by the awesome
statistics and perhaps colored by
some gruesome descriptions of
accidents, it would document the
death toll as a combined product of
excess drinking and careless and/or
illegal driving of machines which
are too powerful for their legal
purposes.

Absurdity

Chapter VII would cite the
aesthetic absurdity of cars — the
annual "restyling" that has little to
do with their function but nearly
everything to do with their price
and with the fact that car design —
as opposed to art or music —
suffices for much of the aesthetic
life of the common man. Who
indeed has not seen people
enraptured over the "look" of the
"new car" and debating long and
loudly that Car A is "more
handsome" than Car B?

Chapter VIII would discuss the
enormous cost of auto
transportation: the purchase price,
which is a large chunk of a year's
salary (depending of course on the
car's size, "styling" and name), and
the cost-per-mile, which is far in
excess of mass transportation.

Chapter IX, perhaps the most
telling, would show how foolish a
car is as an investment. The
prudent rule of spending is that the
value of a good where bought will
always be greater at least never
lesser than when disposed of. Food,
unfortunately, cannot fit this
category. But houses (when bought,
not rented), land, jewelry, horses,
etc. are all investment
consumption. So is furniture when
antique. Clothing is not, but the
value drop may of course be
retarded if the clothes are classic.
(One is reminded of a famous
comment by millionairess Mrs.
Winston Guest who remarked that
one of her favorite suits, a simple
tweed, was I think, a dozen years
old. One thinks also of the
consumption patterns of many -
especially rural — rich: large homes,
lots of antiques but often small and
old cars. Food is a pardonable
no-investment expense; big and new
cars are not.

The conclusion, of course,
would be a plea for putting the car
in its place — for thinking of it as a
costly box with wheels that, alas,
must be used when mass
transportation is not available.
Logically following would be an
appeal to proceed with all
deliberate speed with mass
transportation — with heavily
subsidized mass transportation and
taxes on autos where such
transportation is working well.

Wrong Train

I remember getting on the
wrong train at Oxford — a town, I
suppose, about Charlottesville's size
— because, even though the Oxford
station has four platforms, so many
trains were there it was necessary to
put two trains on one platform at
once and, as luck would have it, I
boarded the wrong one.

But what a pleasant mistake: it
could only happen in a country
where there is a train to anywhere
at almost anytime. England (and
much of Europe) is the
transportation future. It works very
well and I hope we are not far
behind.