Re:Car of the Century

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@cisco.com>]

The chief difficulty in these car of the year/century/milestone polls is
that many people have a great deal of difficulty separating cars that
they merely like from cars that have changed the face of the automotive
world, whether by dint of manufacturing, marketing, or motorsports. 
This has always been my explanation for why European journalists, for
example, always include various Lancia models -- none of which have ever
sold in more than double-digit quantities outside an area about 1000
kilometers from the Alps -- in their lists of hundred best cars.

Years ago, I read some magazine's compilation of Most Significant Cars,
and one of the journalists (I don't remember who) picked the 1958
Thunderbird.  The '58? I thought?  That was a hideous, grotesque,
oversized pig of a four-seater, a wretched sellout of the original
Thunderbird concept as a potential second contestant for the title of
American sports car.  Which was exactly the journalist's point --
whenever possible, American manufacturers will make cars bigger, less
fun to drive, and more ostentatious.  And if you doubt that, take a look
at the Lincoln Navigator...  So the '58 was more a watershed/landmark
car than the original '55, in his argument, because it so dramatically
pointed the way that U.S. car companies have always followed.  And not
just American cars -- the base model Honda Civic of 1998 weighs probably
half a ton more than the base model Civic of 25 years ago.

Lgowin@AOL.com, for example, writes:

> The old Honda Controlled Vortex Combustion Chamber was a major 
> milestone in the development of the cleaner modern cars.

More than that, I voted for the Civic as one of my ten selections (and
not because I have a lowered Civic with a 4" chrome exhaust tip and 17"
rims, though since getting a borderline buzz-cut they've started looking
better for some reason... ahem.)  I believe it was a milestone
automobile for several reasons:

1.  While Sir Alec Issigonis' Mini (another choice) was in 1959 the
first car to use the transverse FWD layout, Honda's use of it in the
1973 Civic -- the first by a company outside of the British
Phlegmsucking Leyland oligarchy of dunces -- moved it out of the realm
of oddball or niche cars (such as Saab, Audi, and Lancia) and into the
global market.

2.  Largely because of good timing, the Civic (introduced to the United
States market in 1973, months before the Arab oil embargo and the first
U.S. fuel crisis) launched Soichiro Honda's small company to
international prominence, a prominence which has since gone on to
include a series of Formula One World Championships.

3.  The Civic's chief U.S. competition at the time, in its price range,
were all wretched little cars, poorly made and often poorly supported,
which often seemed to exist in the product line for the sole purpose of
making people feel like vermin for being unable to afford anything
better than such an execrable little piece.  I bought a Honda Civic in
1973, as I was about to start college, largely because the other cars I
could afford in the U.S. were so uniformly awful.  The Civic was *fun*
to drive, quick, nimble, and dependable.  It changed the shape of the
compact car market in the U.S. the way the Mini, with its adoption by
the rich and famous as well as the poor and unknown, changed it in
Europe.

4.  Virtually every automobile in the world today owes its platform,
layout, and execution to the transverse FWD setup that the Civic, if not
invented, then certainly proved in the automotive world.  The exceptions
are largely pinnacle automobiles -- Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes, BMW,
Lotus, Porsche.  On your lunch break, take a quick count of cars in the
parking lot and track how many of them are transverse FWD.  (Well,
Porsche is more a testament to German stubbornness in the face of
overwhelming rational arguments to the contrary, but I digress. :-)

5.  Soichiro Honda is probably Japan's only candidate for a word I just
made up -- "autarch," or self-made ruler (with the pun inherent in
"auto-" being very much intended) in the motor industry.  He was one of
a kind, in a nation where being one of a kind is culturally despised or
at least distrusted.  Case in point: Name ten American or European car
companies named after a single individual.  Now name three Japanese car
companies named after a single individual.  I'm reasonably sure there's
only one, Honda; the other giants of Japanese manufacturing (Mitsubishi
and Matsushita, for instance) are named after families, but even though
Bugatti and Porsche, even Austin-Healey had family members in the
business, their names are forever associated with specific individuals.  

This is rarely the case in Japan.  Not to discount the magnificence of
Enzo Ferrari's contribution to motoring (if that contribution is
typically limited, on the scale of the masses at least, to applying the
names of various Ferrari automobiles to bread-and-butter sedans in an
attempt to give those cars a modicum of undeserved and usually wildly
inappropriate panache), but il Commendatore was able to succeed at least
in part because he had the infrastructure of centuries of Italian
culture -- the culture that made possible powerful individuals such as
Lorenzo de Medici, Vittorio Emmanuele, and yes, Benito Mussolini too --
as well as his experience running Scuderia Ferrari for Alfa Romeo, to
build on.  As Newton would have said, Ferrari was able to see so far
because he was standing on the shoulders of giants; in Japan, giants
tended to be cut down to a uniform size.  It is all the more impressive
that Honda was able to achieve what he was given his milieu.

6.  One of Honda's chief engineers in charge of engine development once
was quoted, back in the early days of CAFE when many Americans actually
cared about fuel economy, that to his mind, maximum performance and
maximum economy were the same thing -- they were both about squeezing
the most out of a liter of fuel, and whether that got you farther or got
you there faster was all the same.  It seems that this is so much in
line with a certain twin cam 1290cc engine that a few of us here know
and love that we have to acknowledge kinship with the emotion.

> but in my opinion, the car of the century
> should be something relevant to the everyday person.

Bingo.  And today, the everyday person -- including our European
counterparts who are driving new Fiat automobiles marketed and sold
under the Alfa Romeo brand name -- are driving cars that owe their
market acceptance to Alec Issigonis, Soichiro Honda, and whoever the
engineer on Giorgetto Giugiaro's team was who adopted the exact same
powertrain layout for the original VW Golf of 1975.  Which is why three
of my picks were the Mini, the Civic, and the Golf.  Would they be my
*favorite* cars?  No, even though I've owned at least one of each.  Were
they cars that gave the motor industry of today its very shape, fabric
and structure?  Absolutely.

And yes, of course I picked the Giulietta Sprint from their list -- for
many of the same reasons: take that walk through the parking lot again,
this time noticing how many cars use comparatively small-displacement
twin-cam engines with individual fuel metering for each cylinder.  The
Giulietta (if you take the Veloce's twin Webers as the individual fuel
metering part, at least) was the first car to use this concept in a
model intended for relatively mass consumption (certainly compared to
the coachbuilt prewar Alfas, and even to the assembly-line 1900 that
preceded it).  The Giulietta, of course, also happens to be a personal
favorite, which simply made its selection that much sweeter.