Car

Bryan Appleyard's history traces the car's influence on popular culture across roughly 150 years, with a particular focus on the United States. Automobiles have generated enormous wealth and fed hopes of freedom and mobility. They have changed how people perceive distance, opening the world to the eye and the imagination, and they have shaped films, songs and novels. Their demands for roads, bridges, petrol stations, vast factories and worldwide supply networks have reshaped the planet, and much of what people now buy, desire or dream of depends on the car and the meanings it carries.

The book looks closely at particular vehicles and the people connected to them. It covers the Ford Model T and the engineering that made it significant, and a red Mercedes-Benz S-Class that workers built for Nelson Mandela when he left prison. It also examines Kanye West's customised Maybach, the Volkswagen Beetle and the role Major Ivan Hirst played in saving it, Elvis Presley's fleet of 100 Cadillacs, the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, the BMC Mini, and the Tesla Model S together with its founder Elon Musk, whom Appleyard presents as a sign of what comes next.

Appleyard argues that the car as most people know it is nearing its end. The book narrates both the rise of this machine, which he credits with building the modern world, and the changes now overtaking it.