The Mayor though was having better luck with an even higher authority. He paid TV evangelist Robert Schuller $20,000 to come to Flint and rid the city of its unemployment plague. ibid.
The crowning jewel in Flint’s plan to attract tourists was Auto World, hailed by city officials as the world’s largest indoor theme park. ibid.
Auto World closed due to a lack of visitors. ibid.
Half of Flint was now receiving some form of government welfare. Meanwhile, Roger Smith gave himself a $2,000,000 raise. ibid.
I don’t run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving. David Attenborough
America ... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. Hunter S Thompson
For more than a century Britain has been a driving force in the manufacture of the motor car creating many of the petrol-powered innovations that have transformed the way people live. Paul McGann, The Petrol Age I: Full Throttle, Sky Atlantic 2013
Brooklands: the first motor-racing track in the world. ibid.
Between 1924 and 1935 Malcolm Campbell broke the world land speed record an incredible nine times. ibid.
Some cars are works of art ... The best are all about glamour. Paul McGann, The Petrol Age II: Streetcars of Desire
Motor racing continued to borrow from the equestrian era. Drivers raced in coloured silks like jockeys. ibid.
Dorothy Levitt: she pioneered motoring for women. ibid.
Royce designed a car that was streets ahead of the competition: the Silver Ghost. ibid.
Bentley: a car that suited perfectly the hedonism of the inter-war years. ibid.
Bentley and Brooklands were the most glamorous things in England. ibid.
Austin was determined to become his own boss. Paul McGann, The Petrol Age III, Sky Atlantic 2013
Austin 7s could be made in their thousands. ibid.
Land Rover ... something special had been created. ibid.
Two-thirds of all Land Rovers ever made are still working. ibid.
The Land Rover is the most ubiquitous car in the world. ibid.
Jaguar motto – Grace, Space and Pace. ibid.
E-Type: added fifties’ cool ... A bit of a bargain: half the price of an Aston Martin. ibid.
E-Type sold over 70,000 in its lifetime. ibid.
The mini was his masterpiece. ibid.
Ever since the birth of motoring Britain has frequently led the way. Paul McGann, The Petrol Age: Trailblazers IV
In 1935 with over a million cars on Britain’s roads traffic fatalities reached over seven thousand. ibid.
Sports cars: the best looking was the Austin Healey 100. ibid.
The golden age in which Moss raced was also a dangerous one. ibid.
By the 1960s motor racing was becoming a big business. ibid.
Today there simply couldn’t be a Colin Chapman. ibid.
No other man-made device since the shields and lances of ancient knights fulfils a man’s ego like an automobile. Lord Rootes 1894-1964, attributed
You have your own company, your own temperature control, your own music – and don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you. Steven Norris, British Conservative politician, re cars v public transport 1995
Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black. Henry Ford, My Life and Work
I will build a car for the great multitude. Henry Ford
British motors weren’t always easy to love ... The Rover SD1 was a national project. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s III: Goodbye Great Britain 75-77, BBC 2012
We are living in an age of German empire … German engineering, German expertise and German exports. Dominic Sandbrook, Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us, BBC 2013
The men running British car companies were getting old. ibid.
The Mini is probably the most celebrated car in British history. ibid.
Leading the blitzkrieg was Volkswagen’s hatchback. ibid.
Right from the start BL ran into trouble. ibid.
British cars were notorious. ibid.
The new Austin Metro – a British car to beat the world. ibid. tele advert
In Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, the BMW badge became a status symbol. ibid.
The Germans didn’t stop with Mini – BMW owned Rolls Royce too. Even Bentley. ibid.
This is the story of how motoring came to the masses. How dictatorships and democracies alike pursued the dream of cars for all. James May’s Cars of the People s1e1, BBC 2014
The Lovebug has a dark side. The Beetle’s beginnings were mired in scandal. ibid.
The first beach buggy was built in 1962. ibid.
Lada ... The world’s most derided car. ibid.
By the second half of the twentieth century the word consumption already had positive connotations. James May’s Cars of the People s1e2
A bunch of midgets with funny accents. Welcome to the exciting and occasionally baffling world of the European micro-car. ibid.
Reliant’s uniformly gormless range symbolised all that was wrong with the English three-wheeler ... Voted the worst British car in history. ibid.
The 2CV is a contemporary of the Beetle ... Truly iconic cars. ibid.
This is a Peel Trident ... This one is a fake more modern replica. ibid.
Ford Transits ... Over six million ... The most useful vehicle on our roads. ibid.
The Transit has helped change the world. ibid.
Aspiration – the cars we always dreamt about ... Rolls Royce was the chariot of presidents, kings and tycoons. James May’s Cars of the People s1e3
For decades the British and the Italians were the champions of the small roadster ... The Mazda, the same basic idea, was all the rage. ibid.
To win a car first you must lose a war. James May’s Cars of the People s2e1
Immediately post-war Britain was the world’s second biggest car maker … The Austin 7 was launched right back in 1972 and was Britain’s very first people’s car. ibid.
The [Morris] Minor though modest was very middle class. ibid.
We were basically car racists. ibid.
A fully loaded supercharged Range Rover – it will cost you around £120,000. James May’s Cars of the People s2e2
Lamborghini Aventador … somewhere north of £300,000. ibid.
A World War II Willys jeep … Over 600,000 jeeps were produced during the war. ibid.
The Land Cruiser brought with it Toyota’s new approach to car making. ibid.
Land Rover – you can drive it into the town … The Land Rover looked cool. ibid.
Ford F-150: This blue collar hero comes with true off-road credentials. ibid.
The fantasy cars of TV and cinema were formed by our dreams of the car of the future. James May’s Cars of the People s2e3
Model T: Infrastructure, economics, and Ford’s mass production methods then would decisively tip the balance … The petrol age had dawned and its god was the piston engine. ibid.