User:Amanda Huggenkis/Major Assignment 5

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Jeremy Gentel 23181587 Professor Stephanie Kent 12/14/07

Ford: The All-American Car Company

When someone wonders who invented the car, the same name almost always enters the mind, Henry Ford. Of course it was not Henry Ford, it was some French guy who isn’t worth remembering, but Ford sticks with our memory. It’s probably because Ford was an American, but more than likely it is because he actually did, invent the moving assembly line. This idea was revolutionary, being able to push vehicles off the line every three minutes did not just speed up the process, it made a Model T available to the common man for only a few months pay. Luxury became available to people that had never received any. The assembly line had taken away jobs and successfully converted the American Dream from an idea based around working, to one based around buying (Nortan 85). Advertising in the 1920s reached new heights with this new consumer culture blossoming around the country. And with the economy booming during the 1920s, cars seemed to almost be a necessity to the city dweller looking to get out of the city. From this point onward, cars have evolved with the times and eventually produced the cultural text, the SUV, as we know it today. The SUV is important to understand because it is one of the latest phenomena to come out of the automobile industry and if we can understand where it came from and where it is going, we can find out a lot about how we think of ourselves as Americans.

Henry Ford once said, “We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city” (Gunster). When one looks at this quote, the statement “city problem” jumps out. This problem was the population issues many cities in the east coast were feeling around the 1920s. Immigrants were traveling to the U.S, in search of work in its cities. The areas outside of the cities had not been populated by anyone other than farmers. With the use of cars, Ford realized people could escape the dreariness of city life and have a picnic under a tree in a field with the help of his affordable cars. His advertising campaigns in magazines and newspapers, pictured families in Ford cars traveling through natural scenery, on their way to a picnic or a vacation (Locomobilia). These scenes along with the low cost of buying Ford vehicles made cars a commodity worth investing in. Within the decade, more people were moving to the suburbs than were moving to the cities, and it looked like Ford’s dream of moving out of the city was coming true (Harlan).

As the U.S. moved through two world wars and into the 1960s, the country had come out of WWII as one of the two remaining super powers of the world. The economy was booming and the population was feeling powerful once again. In light of the theme of the times, Ford began an advertising campaign for a new line of car, the Ford Mustang. A 1968 Mustang car commercial shows blaintly, that to gain the respect of men outside of work, women must buy a Mustang (Ford Mustang). The commercial portrays the woman owner as a scientist with a PhD, who, suddenly, became interesting to men playing baseball because of her Ford Mustang. With the words in the song belting out, “Only Mustang makes it happen.” Ford had successfully come out with a car that would not only make a woman more respectable in the world of men, but a car that would make her almost like “one of the guys”. Ford had simply continued on the theme of respectability and being able to conquer anything life threw at you, through their vehicles. It is only necessary for a woman who considers herself powerful, but can’t get out of the woman “mold” of society, to buy a Mustang and finally let everyone know just how powerful she is. Just by looking at the name “Mustang”, it is a name for a wild horse, an untamed, powerful, free-spirit. Ford had shifted the consumer away from the places a Ford can bring you and into what a Ford can make you into.

Ford put their first full-sized SUV on the market in 1966 with the Ford Bronco. It boasted a powerful engine, 4-wheel drive, and a tough frame. An ad from 1967 shows the Bronco plowing snow off a mountain trail and reads, “Don’t let anything stop you” (1967). Although the Bronco was one of the first SUVs to hit the market, it did not hit the market as hard as Ford had hoped. They were marketing towards a tough vehicle, but the idea for the SUV had not yet crept into the minds of America.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Gunster argues, the country had lost interest in technological achievements (Gunster 12). With the help of the movements throughout the 1960s and 1970s people had become interested in the environment and the ecological effects that we were causing it. Enter, the Ford Explorer. Just looking at the name, “Explorer”, it brings up connotations of seeing things that nobody else has seen. This vehicle could allow you to escape your daily routine and see a new world in nature. Through clever advertising such as the 1992 Explorer ad saying, “You want to go where no one has gone before. This weekend.” (1992). Ford had successfully moved the context of a Ford SUV out of the Bronco stage of a car that allows you to do more things in nature, to a vehicle that can bring you to nature the way other cars can’t. According to David Geowey, because the country was going through a recession through the 1970s and 1980s, it needed cars that would “represent the reassertion of a courageous American defiance in response to threatened frontiers” (122). With communism slowly dieing throughout this time, and foreign car companies creeping into the country with lower-priced, overall better cars, America needed a vehicle to call its own, and the SUV was it.

As America entered the 1990s the economy was once again booming and the mini-van, which had been so prominent during the 1980s, was starting to lose steam in the suburban family market. SUVs boasted the same, if not more, holding capacity as the mini-van, with a bigger engine. These features along with the symbolism of nature of how an SUV can bring you places other cars can’t, jump started the movement towards SUVs. The SUV had all but taken over the market throughout the 1990s, comprising of 23 percent of total auto sales (Goewey 122). The symbolism of power and control had officially gripped the SUV and Americans ate it up.

The hip-hop movement did wonders to push along the SUV as a hot commodity that Americans should want. Advertisers jumped on the idea of having their SUVs, with their powerful overtones, featured in rap videos, showing their cars with powerful hip-hop artists. The up-and-coming power of hip-hop culture in white suburbia during the 1990s was used by marketers to place even more meaning into their goods (Wynter 565). It is unclear whether the SUV empowered the artists or if the artists empowered the SUV, the correlation has become so blurred. But one thing is for certain, the materialistic views that the hip-hop culture embodied through endorsements and music videos flowed seamlessly into the SUV. Before the country knew it, the SUV had moved up into its desired position as the top of the food chain regarding the American car market.

Towards the end of the 1990s and heading into the new millennium, SUVs continued to advertise natural environments and the consumers’ ability to conquer them. Yet, only ten percent of SUV owners ever left the roads or highways to conquer those outdoor elements (Goewey 120). After 9/11/01, Americans needed to feel protected. Just three months after the September 11th attacks, The H2 was introduced in New York City by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Gunster 19). Schwarzenegger embodied everything it was to be tough; New York City needed a tough car to feel protected again. What better car to bring out then an even bigger version of the Hummer military vehicle, to protect the citizens of New York from terrorists on the streets. With this unveiling of the H2, the SUV, building on its already established American ideals, had promoted itself to protector. The reaction was immediate; President Bush began the process of traveling in a motorcade made up of black SUVs, rather than the traditional black limos. The SUV had become the Americans’ bomb shelter, protecting us from violence and chaos we had not been exposed to before.

As America was feeling protected from terrorism and violence through the SUV, manufacturers were hit with another reason for making people feel safe in an SUV. The Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina happened in quick succession, the tsunami in 2004 and Katrina in 2005. Advertisers took this opportunity to conform the SUV into a different type of protector, a protector from Mother Nature. The transition from an SUV being able to transport you to a distant location outside of your normal routine collided with feelings of uncertainty about the natural world and what it can do. In a 2007 Ford Escape commercial, a huge and powerful waterfall is shown, just to have a Ford Escape climb over it with no problem because the huge waterfall ended us being a very small one in a stream. (Ford the Escape). The message in this ad is, no matter how scary and nature can seem, the SUV can make any powerful, natural phenomena into barely an obstacle.

America today is in a moral struggle regarding the SUV. The SUV is still an appealing investment for most suburbanites, with its spaciousness and security involved. But a new movement has crept up for global warming and SUVs are the main subject of concern. SUVs have tried to close the wounds they’ve received from a media that is bashing them for their lack of environmentally friendly features, by introducing Hybrid SUVs. Ford’s Escape boasts up to 34 mpg with their new hybrid, but with no towing capacity (Ford Motor Company). So why would someone get a more expensive hybrid SUV with no towing capacity, instead of a regular car with relatively the same gas mileage, for thousands of dollars cheaper? The function is that the SUV has established itself as a staple of American culture, and while I believe it will be forced to die out as more and more people jump on the global warming band-wagon, what will happen to the vehicle that has shaped the way Americans feel about themselves for the past 40 years? The only answer to the problem of global warming and the SUV is simple. We are entering into a new age as Americans, where the SUV just won’t fit in the agenda of cutting down CO2 emissions. If we don’t wake up from our power hungry, insecure about the world feelings around the country, the SUV will live on as our “protector” until the idea of America dies with it.

Works Cited

Douglass, Harlan. The Rise of Urban America. Chicago: Ayer Publishing, 1970.

Ford Motor Company, "Ford Vehicle Showroom." Ford. 2007. Ford Motor Company. 07 DEC 2007 <http://www.showroom.fordvehicles.com/Showroom.jsp>.

Freeman, Sholnn. "A Tad late, Car Marketers Taget Rap Fans." The Wall Street Journal 20 APR 2004 08 DEC 2007 <http://proquest.umi.com.silk.library.umass.edu:2048/pqdweb?index=0&did=620957031&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1197640527&clientId=2724>.

Gunster, Shane. "'You Belong Outside' Advertising, Nature, and the SUV." Ethics and the Environment (2004) 1-31. 04 DEC 2007

Nortan, Anne. "The Signs of Shopping." Signs of Life in the USA (2006): 83-89.

Wikipedia, "List of Ford Vehicles." Wikipedia. 06 Dec 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_vehicles>.

Wynter, Leon. "Marketing in Color." Signs of Life in the USA (2006): 561-565.

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1923 Ford Car Ad 02 Dec 2007 <>.

Ford Mustang 1968 TV commercial(1). You Tube. 14 Dec 2007 <http://youtube.com/results?search_query=Ford+Mustang+commercial&search=Search>.

1967 Ford Bronco Ad. 10 Dec 2007 <>.

1992 Ford Explorer Ad. 11 Dec 2007 <>.

Ford the Escape. You Tube. 10 Dec 2007 <http://youtube.com/results?search_query=Ford+Escape+commercial&search=Search>. --Amanda Huggenkis 14:35, 14 December 2007 (EST)