NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. ® UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Metallic Mask: A History of Car Modification by David L. Thomas A thesis submitted to The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts School of Journalism and Communication Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario September, 2005 ©2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be includedBien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. i * i Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements This thesis has certainly been a bit of an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster, but what a ride! I could not have made it here alone. I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor Paul Attallah. Your intelligent commentary and questions have really helped me along the way. Thank you for your infinite patience and dedication - for always showing me the light at the end of the tunnel. Along the way I have encountered many other inspirational and great teachers at Carleton. These people have motivated me and encouraged me along the way, and I have them to thank for being so positive, and also for tolerating my occasional tardiness. In no particular order (well alphabetical actually): Ross Eaman, Charlene Elliott, Derek Foster, Robert Fournier, Sheryl Hamilton, Norman Hillmer, Karim H. Karim, Richard McGrath, Joseph Ngare, Dwayne Winseck. Thank you all. Special thanks to Chapters for letting non-paying customers loiter there - 1 have spent countless hours there devouring the latest automotive magazines, and learning quite a lot about car culture in the process. Big thanks go out to my family: To my mother Susan for heavily financing my first car - a Cadillac which I drove during high school. To my father Michael for allowing me the use of his laneway and garage over the years - 1 appreciate you not crying (too hard) over spilt oil. To my brother Dylan for “riding shotgun” during my first test-drives when we ‘borrowed’ my parents’ car late at night... It has been a fun ride and I thank all those who made this possible. Cheers, Dave Thomas Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract While celebrating individual freedom, the automobile is also a mass-produced commodity embedded within economies of scale and industrial practices. To purchase an automobile as 'unique' as its owner, an automobile which celebrates the autonomy of this particular individual purchaser, therefore becomes problematic. Car modifications are an attempt to resolve this contradiction. Car modification, therefore, is a form of meaning making that takes a characteristic artefact of industrial civilization - the automobile - and re-shapes it into an expression of cultural worldviews neither intended nor foreseeable by industrial origins. This thesis examines the history of car modification from its inception to the present. More specifically it augments that history by contributing an analysis of the least studied period of car modification which occurs between 1975 & the present. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................1 Chapter I - Literature Review.................................................................................... 12 Chapter II - The Early Years: Cars become culture..................................................35 Chapter III - The Golden Years: Cars are the Culture.............................................. 56 Chapter IV - The Tuning Era: Hot Rods Go Digital ................................................ 81 Chapter V - Persistent Themes in the History of Car Modification ........................112 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 151 Bibliography. ...........................................................................................................162 Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 169 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Introduction The car was a 1985 BMW 5-series sedan with shiny black paint and black leather seats. It was lightly modified with a chrome exhaust pipe jutting out from under the bumper, and a very dark “drug dealer” tint. We were driving down highway 7 towards a party in Perth at around 10pm, when I noticed a car not far off my rear bumper. “That guy is right on my tail! Is that a Mustang, I can’t really see with my dark tint,” I asked my friend in the back. “Yeah it’s a Mustang!” replied Leo from the backseat. “Watch this - My BMW will destroy him!” I laughed to my friends. With those words of affirmation I proceeded to signal left and aggressively pull into the oncoming lane to overtake the car in front of me. The Mustang followed suit, and we reached speeds of 150-160km/h on windy Highway 7 with its 80km/h speed limit. “Man that guy is really keeping up!” After two minutes of heated pursuit, the “Mustang” turned on its lights and sirens, and I realized that I had just given a vigorous chase to a marked police cruiser - not smart! To make matters worse, when the police officer knocked on my window, I was unable to open it since it was broken, so I opened the door suddenly - this startled him and he quickly pulled me out and escorted me to the back seat of the cruiser... This is the most exciting story I can recount from my own experience as a car modifier, and I certainly learned a lot from it. The first thing was that friends should not always be trusted; second, that pitch black windows were not ideal for visibility. Most of all, I learned that the desire to flex one’s ego in a car can have serious consequences. Modified cars are an interesting form of communication that encompasses many dynamics; furthermore, as someone who has participated in this community and also observed its behaviour for many years, I find it an interesting topic of communication. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 It is a subject that does not simply affect the members of the various subcultures that make it up; rather car modification is part of a wide-reaching cultural habit that is visible all over the world in many different communities. This cultural phenomenon is a perfect example of the type of object studied in communication. For over 100 years the automobile has enjoyed tremendous popularity and exercised enormous fascination, for whom “Americans have a love affair with their cars,” is a cliched expression that rather nicely describes the relation between humanity and automobility. A seductive ideology of freedom and power attaches to the automobile, to such an extent that the car has literally taken over the western world as the way to get around. Despite numerous negative side-effects, such as pollution and the restriction of public space, the automobile nonetheless enjoys a seemingly insurmountable advantage over alternative methods of transportation. The ideology of the automobile naturally pervades print advertisement, media