"THE GREAT LOVE AFFAIR" 1966 AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE, HIGHWAYS & CAR CULTURE DOCUMENTARY 16804

these are cars factory fresh this year we're making nearly nine million of them a record this year we're making fewer than four million babies not a record you might conclude that we love cars more than twice as much as babies [Music] of course you can make a case against cars they can't love you back they take up too much space they pollute the air they mess up cities they aren't safe but that is another broadcast what concerns us now at the time of year when it's all american to be talking about looking at dreaming of or buying a new 1966 model what concerns us now is this thing we have about cars the great love affair with cbs news correspondent harry [Music] reisner there are 72 million cars in the united states if you're 65 years old there are more cars alive today than there were people when you were born [Laughter] out of freeway we'll continue on westbound check the rest of santa monica off of the harbor freeway reporters go up in helicopters to sort it all out they look over the major arteries to see if any cars are bleeding through if you stacked all the cars on end bumper-to-bumper they'd reach to the moon and a quarter of the way back what a mess we got below it's a mess all right but it's our mess and we're willing to live with it what it is we're making all these four wheeled toys faster than we can think up good names for them we have to use them for something [Music] so nobody walks to work or to the corner for a loaf of bread anymore the housewife does her walking in the parking lots she's out from in front of the stove and in behind the wheel if we don't have one of our own handy and feel the urge we walk into an office and rent one we convert them into portable living rooms into rolling executive offices we take them on vacation along with boats luggage and living quarters we're always going someplace and for a while there it looked as though we might run out of places to go american ingenuity was up to the problem though it started inventing places to get to in a car originally the phrase drive-in meant only one thing a restaurant that brought food to your car window now drive-in can mean anything [Music] you can put money in the bank without ever taking your foot off the brake while you still have enough money in there to cover it you can drive up and mail off a check for a bill you owe on the car probably [Music] there are no drive-in bars you have to buy the whole bottle [Music] there are four thousand drive-in theaters around the country [Music] the main feature starts at a different time in every car [Music] if you've driven everywhere all week there's no sense on fastening your safety belt on sunday welcome to southern california's original walk-in drive-in church by the time this service comes to a close more than ten thousand people will have streamed in and out of this church to worship in the beautiful glass sanctuary and in the privacy of the family car we had a great big wonderful dream of building a walk-in driving church like this where people could sit inside a sanctuary or in the privacy of their car hearing the spoken word and the great organ in the choir through hundreds of high fidelity speakers while fountains leaped in the sun drenched sunlight and while we listen to birds singing in the trees and flowers blooming i'm delighted to announce today that our dream of a chain of walk-in driving churches from san francisco to san diego is developing beautifully so welcome to southern california's chain of walk-in driving churches on this beautiful beautiful morning southern california is more completely devoted to the automobile than any other region if cars were water southern california would be declared a national disaster area attending church in a car does not seem unusual to those who come here regularly it's a non-denominational church you can come on a plymouth a rambler a cadillac anything one half the total land area of downtown los angeles is devoted to cars roads parking lots junk yards drive-ins by 1984 there will be twice as many cars as there are now logically that would mean the end of los angeles will anyone care will anyone even slow down to look what we have here is more questions and answers all anyone knows is we've got this thing this involvement with the automobile it's all mixed up with status the national economy sex and transportation that's some mix-up and we start getting into it early the kids have pretty much given up toy soldiers in the average sand pile it's toy cars over dolls two to one the same ratio as adults are producing automobiles over babies [Music] when the kids get out of the sandbox they start taking the wheels off things and putting together toy cars with a lot of simulated stature of course once you've got anything that looks like a car you want to see how fast it will go this is a soapbox derby detergent box derby actually [Music] slot car racing parlors are springing up in many parts of the country it's the newest car game we may have to run our own cars on tracks like these sometime in the future you'd hook onto a hotline plugged into say denver head-on collisions are still fun at the amusement park [Music] kids have several billion dollars pocket money to spend every year so grown-ups invented something called the teenage fare customized cars are big attractions at those a customized car isn't so much for driving as for looking at [Music] the all-american boy outgrows pants pimples and heating onions but he never gets over the automobile if he's mechanically inclined he takes them apart and puts them together if he isn't he lets it go at just taking them apart in school he studies reading writing new math and the internal combustion engine the kids aren't planning careers as mechanics they're going to be doctors and insurance salesmen like everyone else [Music] anytime after about midnight the day he comes of age the average teenager is out there lined up ready for his driver's test at the next corner turn left if you're a boy the day you go for your license is not like being promoted to the fourth grade it's not like shaving or kissing a girl for the first time the day you go for your license is the biggest thing that's happened since you were born stop alongside of the car on the right back in and parked behind us you've been moving the car 12 feet back and forth in your own driveway since you were 10 and practicing with a learner's permit for six months now this license examiner is sitting there and you can't even find reverse you really want your license pretty bad and this fellow sitting next to you hates all kids particularly boy kids always flux them the first time you have to remember to do a lot of dumb things you don't really do when you're driving you can't rest your elbow on the window or anything drive out proceed straight ahead once he gets his license he's got a driving life expectancy of 45 years and half a million miles ahead of him the average driver will buy 15 cars and have 13 accidents the national safety council also says there's a 1 in 40 chance you'll be killed in an accident turn right at the next corner life is one long wait for things that don't come in the mail one of the things that keeps not coming is that first driver's license when it does he's ready maybe he'll stop by eddie's maybe he'll drop over to his girl's house maybe he'll go get a job to tell the bank about so he can get a loan to buy his own car to get to the job in when he leaves mother will go in the house and have a good cry up till now she's had the car all to herself he isn't just a kid anymore beginning today he's a potential car buyer these men are preparing a virgin chevrolet impala for sacrifice on the altar of the great god advertising the car will be towed out chained to a rock in the sea and shot by a camera a commercial like this one they're making runs for one minute on television and costs perhaps thirty thousand dollars when you buy a car for three thousand dollars about sixty two fifty of that is to pay for what it cost the company to interest you in the car in the first place you may say to yourself i'm never going to park my car on a wet rock 200 yards out in the ocean advertising is nonsense well we're all in on that advertising may be nonsense but it's beautifully done and it's the way we like to be advertised at almost everyone will recognize the result of all this labor which introduced the 65 chevrolet to a waiting world chevrolet the beautiful shape for 1965. [Music] the car commercials all promise a lot besides transportation what they do is they find out what our dreams are and play them back to us maybe we should be dreaming about improved safety equipment but most of us aren't but we are dreaming about is love beauty freedom fun luxury speed class and sex appeal you name it their cars will give it to you one implication is that if you consume the right car it will change your whole personality winifred hasn't been herself lately she's changed her mind seems to be a million miles away willow lane hasn't seen winnie since the 65 deluxe mustang [Music] when does a man decide it is time to own an automobile that reflects what he has accomplished when does that moment come certainly an automobile of this stature is not a casual investment you own it because you've earned it listen fella if you haven't quite earned it you can always borrow it with the right car you may find romance anywhere get a fury partner a real mover underneath redline tires heavy-duty springs shock stabilizers give the 442 terrific road sense the car commercial can be as masculine as a t-shirt or as feminine as a negligee you are about to meet a true international beauty with a shape that blends elegance and excitement this is beauty by association there it is the latest model although that other model looked too good to trade in thunderbird 1965. i don't know who this fellow is maybe he's coach of the swimming team [Music] [Applause] well maybe not when he looked over a mustang hard top at his ford dealers he discovered some pretty unexpected features inside that's optional equipment of course one thing you notice about car commercials the car is always in a field or by a lake or on an open road with no other car for miles around it's never caught in a traffic jam actually you notice two things about car commercials on television sometimes they're the best thing on the show they ought to be they often spend months choosing exactly the right words [Music] wow but if you think commercials aren't real here's reality what we did we planted a fourteen thousand dollar ferrari on a new york street and took pictures of people looking at it there's not even a girl in a bathing suit in there just car if you own one of these you matter people like jimmy stewart governor rockefeller ex-king leopold of belgium j paul getty francoise sagan drives hers barefoot these people never expect to own a ferrari they're just car fans if it could write they'd ask for its autograph forget it dear we still have nine payments left on the 63 4. [Music] what their money cars program it doesn't cost anything to look at a new car in the street but every year a lot of people pay money to go see all the new cars at an auto show the auto show is an advanced seminar for the car consumer here in one place he can expose himself to every commercial pitch he can touch them to make sure they're real sit in them compare them and dream of a garage big enough to hold one of each those at the show share a common emotion they love cars it's quite a personal thing with me it's just like or some people like a good hunting dog or a rifle or something along this line with me i enjoy the art may i ask you what kind of car you think you rate it as excellent good yes sir excellent that's very good i've been waiting for a rainbow tomorrow like this i think this is the car that the young man of america wants it seems like the future of a futurama car the car makers are confident of their product but they don't want to leave any stone unturned not if there's app to be a sail under it so a lot of them attract attention to their models with models all of a sudden they're out of the corner of his eyes flashing these little lights that flash he panics puts on his break you make you turn and it's cool individual rear seat reading lamps portfolio pockets on the back of each front seat a sliding is the strap for the convenience of your rear seat passengers a remote controlled left outside rear view mirror and a gauge that watches all of the other gauges for you your local car dealer is the next stop after seeing the commercial going to the auto show or spotting something you like on the street what are we all interested in we're looking at impala uh convertible maybe what did you uh thunderstick uh-huh just white walls and two doors yes uh had you thought anything about color the showroom is unique in a land where there's a price tag on everything and that's what everyone pays there's a price tag on cars but that's not what anyone pays millions of otherwise honest americans approach a car dealer with a plan for beating him out of a couple of hundred dollars it's fun for the whole family the fun is see you try to beat the dealer down and he tries to hold you up a lot depends on the car you have to trade in or that's what you think actually even if you have a 65 rolls to trade on an american compact you never seem to get away for less than two thousand dollars i know what you want to spend but uh yeah what you want to spend on what you got to put out is uh two different items 2100 you got a deal see now you're way up to 23. i saved you 200 already so you got a beer taste with a champagne pocketbook a champagne excuse me champagne taste for the beer park more than you want to pay you better wait with christmas when santa claus comes no we don't go well what i guess you'd want to buy a uh somebody else's trouble with a youth car yeah what did you figure out spending for a car i had no idea you had an idea because i when i gave you a price it was too much you'd buy the car for 25.77 with no trade 20 25.77 give me this price all on the paper noise why sure you gotta take it over have you got this whole uh forty four hundred dollars saved up talking to my uh now i'm trying to make a little business deal with her the love affair with the car is consummated in the solemn closing booth ceremony four-speed transmission radio white walls part of the traction on an off-road exhaust the same secret is that's right that's true this is a beautiful little curry guy well that's what i want this is also very nice the day you show up to take delivery on your new car may be the first time you've seen it detroit makes 350 different models and with all the options there are several million possible permutations on a chevrolet alone if what you want is a midnight blue hard top with paisley upholstery wire wheels stick shift and air conditioning you have to order it from a book and they have it assembled for you in detroit when you get it you're likely to remember another option or two you wish you'd order is this where if i had one adjusted for you that's good okay it may be love at first sight at these prices it better be anyhow for better or for worse for richer or for poorer in sickness or in health it's the beginning of life together put the ring on the keys when a car comes home it gets to be sort of a member of the family for one thing it has to have its own room in as much as americans can no longer keep up with the joneses with only one car eleven and a half million families owned two a two-car garage holds one car one lawnmower a wheelbarrow and a bicycle one of the things you do on the honeymoon is read the owner's manual it's more fun than the tag on a mattress most of the mechanical details don't mean too much but everyone understands the beauty tips polish occasionally with a good quality car wax wash with mild soap and plenty of good clean water avoid washing in hot sun of course you can avoid washing altogether by letting someone else do it for you and one of those big dishwashers they have for cars when you start patronizing places like this you've begun to explore the fringe areas of our car economy the production sales maintenance and professional driving of motor vehicles involves one out of every six businesses in the united states and one out of every seven salaried workers there are a great many places to spend more money on your car after you've bought it in the supermarket you roll your cart through canned goods frozen foods and meat on into the automotive department they'll sell you everything from soup to nuts and bolts for your car there are plenty of medical supplies but most of the items have nothing to do with how a car runs just how it looks we like to buy them a toy once in a while too since they did away with radiator caps on the hoods squirrel tails are out it's what they call the after trade in the car business we buy half a billion dollars worth every year it may not make the car feel much better but it's like patting a horse in the nose the horse is indifferent but we like ourselves a little better for doing it i don't know how old you have to be to remember what a real live garage was like there was a rita hayworth calendar in the back room tires stacked up against the wall parts lying all over and a workbench loaded with tools whose only place was wherever they were dropped they aren't like that much anymore the modern garage is like a hospital clinic the head man is a diagnostician they keep medical histories in file cabinets the operating room is antiseptic and most of the patients aren't very sick [Music] you have a water leak on the right side that's right and align the left front door it doesn't sound like a chevy door compared to that anyway that could mean sound proof yeah okay what's the problem with it partly what is your problem uh well right now we're riding down and it seems like uh valve got hung up you know and uh she started tapping and just when i got down to the corner over here it seems to uh gone away doesn't sound like anything serious okay you can have a seat in the waiting room here or you can walk around the shop the big problem when you bring a car to a place like this is to get it to make the same funny noises in front of the mechanic that it was making minutes ago when you were bringing it to see well the car is in the operating room there's nothing you can do but wait and hope for the best about the best you can hope for is a bill under fifty dollars americans pay 6 billion a year for doctor bills they pay more than 6 billion for garage bills of course maybe the cars are in better shape the service garage is like the general practitioner who handles anything from a head coal to an appendectomy but specialization is the thing today for cars as well as people you get your brakes line in one place your speedometer fixed in another cars age in small ways nicks in the paint job tired upholstery small squeaks it's hard to say for certain when that first fleeting doubt flashes across the owner's mind maybe i ought to get rid of it before it starts costing me money after the first year the car begins to look less and less like the television commercials there really isn't much wrong except the owner is bored the average new car buyer trades every three years and that's where the used car business begins used car buyers are different from new car buyers for one thing they don't usually have as much money and for another they're more suspicious they start with the idea that if there wasn't something wrong the original owner wouldn't have traded it oh you don't intend to trade your car no then i can give you a price on this car yeah it's as low as we can possibly take how much will that be an amount of money well what year primarily would you be interested in well a cadillac i would like a 62 i'd like to start with a 62 so i can work up to a new one i mean i can't start with a brand new one the fact that you can't really afford a car doesn't stop a used car man from selling you one i told you before the car starts i want more money for it though one thing about oil that's always pretty slick just like the salesman let me see what i can do for your credit wise uh it's possible maybe i may not be able to finance a five dollar bill i don't know yet let's see what's your last name in the second hand closing booth the salesman sounds like any stranger you might meet at a cocktail party you married a single subway to the lost mary how many depends do you not play my good job four four dependents uh do you have a check on the saving account or anybody no the only money they need the salesman isn't selling cars so much as credit what happens is he arranges for the loan company to lend the man the car so we'll have some way to drive back and forth with the time payments usually there's a point where a fellow stops thinking about the car and starts worrying about the money yeah think about it first though i don't mind you thinking about it and i give you all the time you need to think take two minutes let me ask you a question the only reason you're here is because you're thinking of buying a car if you had a tool thing who's done this isn't that correct when someone has bought a car on time and defaults he's supposed to bring it back some people do some don't they figure it's like returning a no-deposit bottle what happens then a specialist from the loan company comes and takes it it's a little service they have called repossession a repossessor like this who's been in the game for a while can unlock a car start it and drive it off quicker than you can yell willy sutton this would be a handy talent for a man to have when his wife goes off with his car keys in her pocket they give you a few days to pay up and then they sell the car often back to the man who sold it to you in the first place americans owe 25 billion dollars on the cars they drive which works out to something like 225 apiece for every adult in the country for quite a few people this is the way the love affair ends he drives it off you come down in the morning and all that's left is a parking space now again the great love affair with cbs news correspondent harry reisner the interior trims are all ready for reveal mustang panels too yeah well let's hope we get another winner everybody's involved with cars some people are more involved than others people in detroit are most involved of all things have never been better there and ford executives john nevin and don frye are planning to keep it that way projections aren't i suppose too reliable for 1975 but you can see the projections are starting to take into account several conflicting factors there's the two-car family on one end growth of multiple car ownership increased buying rates in general because of economic improvements you can also see the influence of major metropolitan market planning that's got to be taken into account here well there's no question about it i'm sure the future in in many parts of the country is going to involve an automotive method of transportation that's very much oriented to a rapid transit system you know you walk through that museum over there and you see the kind of evolution and transportation from bicycles and carriages to what we've got today and there just isn't any evidence that this is going to slow down and you remind me to remind myself as i did this morning a couple times that we're in a transportation business i'm not sure it's going to be mustangs in 1975 but it'll be something no and you can you can be sure it's going to be different whatever detroit is doing people seem to like it a few years ago people who were proud of not having a television set wouldn't buy a detroit car they were out then now they're in it's okay to drive to a foreign movie in a pontiac in 10 years the median age of americans will be under 25 years and our cars are getting sportier as our population gets younger detroit has found out what people want and they will make as many of them as people will buy i think you know eventually california will be paved the possible exception of uh lake tahoe everybody's moving to california and they're paving yeah yeah i mean can you can this is in love with automobiles and not have a country that's all highway for example probably not some people think all the cars detroit can make is too many the people at this party know a lot about cars and they're having an intellectual talk about them this is a former racing driver named dave davis it's his whiskey they're drinking tc brown the other handlebar mustache digs motorcycles john fitch makes sports cars steve smith used to race this is tom wolf a writer and that's because like they're wrecking the city with us with this concrete nonsense and you know at what cost will this access in and out of town be accomplished there's another solution and it may be even a better solution for instance with new york city why should anybody be allowed to drive a car in new york city on a first place there shouldn't be a lot of driving car in your city one exception to immediately that's it between john fitch's position that the automotive industry is the foundation on which the prosperity of america rests right and the free right of a guy to do anything even a bad thing we got this what we got now they have had a great deal to do with the development of our economy i think the economists and the people who study this sort of thing call it the mobility of labor which means that dave can live in brooklyn heights and get up to one park avenue in 16 minutes in a car this is the mobility of labor that to quote a lot of people has made this country great lawrence pomeroy said that the automobile will take its place with the horse and the sailboat it's a means of sport it's a an aerial sport and not a means of transportation at all there will be more efficient means of transportation you want to go long distances you get a jet or a rocket liner and you're there in an hour or 10 minutes or whatever it is and we're not really concerned with uh transportation per se we're concerned with uh the attraction that automobiles have emotional it's it's what the sixth gun was to the the west the automobile is the great equalizer right and you you don't have to feel inferior to anybody when you're in some kind of automobile that is on a car with theirs all you have to do is you show up with your car and that is an immediate statement about yourself and there aren't any ifs ands or buts you either have a better car or you don't well i was uh i was interested i went out to california in 1963 to do a story on uh kids who make custom cars out there to just find what i was running into which turned out to be a whole aesthetic world that's based completely on automobiles and completely unlike anything that i had ever known about in the east and this was a phenomenon in which kids starting about ages 17 are 18 and going up to age 35 or 38 and some of them 40 years old by now would live the life of artists but in terms of automobiles they would open a garage do collision work to make enough money to build their own custom cars create them right from the axles on up and they would act like artists at first they would work hard enough to pay the rent and then finally they couldn't stand it anymore and they would just starve and the garage became like a garrett the car is much more of a sheer means of aesthetic expression than we've ever thought of it as being the point is basically that automobiles don't have anything to do with uh transportation is is and and that they are an extension of uh one's ego [Music] if cars are an extension of the eagle this is about as far as it can be extended when you've played in a sand pile with cars driven them eaten in them prayed in them slept in them college students look around for something different to do with them the game is to see which team can carry a volkswagen 100 feet and then pile on and drive back to the starting point in the shortest time tuition runs around a thousand dollars [Music] then dad there are the drags for a quiet sunday afternoon in the country [Music] this is the ultimate sand pile a quarter of a million kids drag regularly and half a million more by magazines about it the good thing about dragging is that anyone who does it has to know a lot about something anyway any one of these kids can take an engine apart and put it together again in an afternoon without having any parts left over drag racing isn't what you'd call a carryover sport in another couple of years these kids will be playing golf or getting away from it all in a sailboat and a new crowd will move in right now the car is everything [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] the professionals race another way they go round and round [Music] down and away they go pretty good even start [Music] the race is for 12 hours and the winner is the man who goes the farthest in that time it makes it more like normal vacation driving you know the winner gets the motel room [Music] car racing is the second biggest spectator sport horse racing is biggest the difference is that car race fans are watching the cars and horse race fans are watching their money [Music] everyone ought to risk his life once in a while to keep the juices running a lot of people who subscribe to that theory don't actually like to do it themselves so they watch someone else they don't come to see a crash but if there were never any crashes they'd never come danger is what car racing is about and there's this thing about danger it has a sort of beauty about it and like a flood or a snowstorm it makes friends out of strangers exposed to it this man isn't racing but his car would go almost as fast as the ones at sebring if he put his foot down it's a 1933 duesenberg and the owner driving it is the gambling king of reno and tahoe william herrera he collects money and old cars no one knows how much money he has but there are 1094 classic cars in the hera collection what he's after is one of just about everything made before 1950 it's already the best collection in the world people get pretty sentimental about old cars if you can't remember the year something happened usually you can place it by the car you owned at the time i was an essex baby in my family if you buy a new car this year it'll drop a lot in value as you drive out the showroom door five years later it's down to 25 of its original cost and in 10 years it'll be hard to give away don't give up though if you can hang on to it it starts back up again in about 20 years by the time it's 40 you'll be able to get the original price back on it and maybe much more era is reported to have paid up to 50 000 for some of these the thing to do is to get rich enough young enough so you can buy a new car and put it away for 50 years gentlemen behold the motor car of the future when there's some question about whether anyone has enough time to get where he's going that's drama people are always getting themselves into this situation in cars so naturally cars have been used in movies they used to be bit players but recently the car has come into its own as a star this is from a new movie called the great race the car everyone really wants that detroit doesn't make was in goldfinger you'll be using this aston martin db5 with modifications now pay attention please windscreen bulletproof as on the side and the rear windows revolving number plates naturally valid all countries we've installed some rather interesting modifications you see this arm here now open the top and inside your defense mechanism control smoke screen oil slick rear bullet proof screen and left and right front wing machine guns now this one i'm particularly keen about you see the gear lever here now if you take the top off you'll find a little red button whatever you do don't touch it now why not because you'll release this section of the roof and engage and fire the passenger ejector seat ejector seat you're joking i never joke about my work double seven [Music] a few years ago they put a lot of actors in cars and kept taking pictures of them till they had a film they called mad mad mad mad world you can't even boy are you bugging me man i'm gonna when i get i'm gonna nail [Music] i get stopped [Music] imitating life again [Music] the art world is getting in on this car thing too this is an art gallery and the man is sitting in a piece of sculpture his name is salvador scarpita and he's not a driver he's the artist i think what he did was he bought parts of the cars and uh what is this a good reproduction it's not a reproduction they're actual cars i don't know if they're selling them to me i look at them in the same way that you look at a canvas i don't maybe what it adds up to is people will look at cars even if they call it sculpture now again the great love affair with cbs news correspondent harry reisner there are certain things about any love affair that are too painful to talk about uh the thing that's almost too painful to talk about with cars is sometimes they betray you any car can overheat run out of gas or blow a tire the sense of betrayal comes when you blow a tire and then discover you can't open the trunk to get at the spare or the jack or the luggage packed for a weekend in the country the worst thing that can happen is when a car breaks down all at once all over well i heard a couple of bangs just before i got here so i figured probably the blade snapped off but you don't know when the phantom came off no i don't so how was it generating i must have must have been generating right till i got here well you could have been operating on the battery for quite some time the only problem is that right now she won't start give it another try all right oh let's go leave the pedal alone just work the keys your spark is weak your ignition system is weak the generator belt is not seated properly on the generator here everything's working against it i would say the best thing to do is get towed off you sit in the car and they'll hook you up and tell you down because there's no point in doing this all right so we have labor of two dollars when the doctor does an exploratory operation takes one look and sews them up again he never charges much 11.75 in this big mix-up we've got with cars there's nothing that makes you feel more helpless than a breakdown on the highway the whole world is going by they're all on their way and you're trapped an innocent victim betrayed by an inanimate object by the time you get there it'll all be gone for the car this may be the beginning of the end there are a handful of things you can do with a car that is dead or dying don't underestimate american know-how these people take old cars and do on purpose what most drivers spend all day trying to avoid [Music] is there a doctor in the audience preferably a psychiatrist [Music] not many cars die with their boots on that way mostly they just fade away a car can be fixed for a while and it can be sold to the next guy down the money ladder but finally someone gets stuck with it today it costs more to fix than it's worth we're throwing away five million cars a year and it's getting harder to find a place to throw them junkyards are competing with housing developments and national parks for space there's a limited need for scrap steel so about one million of them are being spread across the countryside in a garland of car dumps [Music] [Music] so [Music] dust we art to dust return up with steel it takes longer nowhere is our passion to consume more evident you wonder how long at this rate it will take us to convert all the elements of earth to our own uses consume them and throw them away we could press these wrecks into the shape of missiles and get rid of them by sending them into permanent orbit [Music] once upon a time a man and his wife with three children and a small dog in the back seat drove from richmond virginia to providence rhode island in this to see the children's grandmother you'll never find that quarter you drop behind the seat now [Music] the car is dead long live the car the maternity ward rolls past the graveyard wheels on wheels a train load of transportation time payments jobs status symbols accident statistics and pleasure there they go to market it would be possible to conclude that we are going a lot of places we don't have to get to much faster than is safe and something we can't afford to pay for on the other hand if what we are doing is good the more we do of it the better with our cars we are doing more of everything tinkering with the fourth dimension stretching the time of our life by compressing distance [Music] any way you look at it the great love affair does not always seem to make good sense but then good sense has never had anything to do with love all modern american man asks is a jug of wine a loaf of bread and thou beside me in a new car this is harry reisner good night [Music] so [Music] um [Music] oh the great love affair was filmed and edited under the supervision and control of cbs news

Channel: PeriscopeFilm

Views: 55,321

Rating: 4.8653846 out of 5

Keywords: Periscope Film, Stock Footage, 4K, HD, 2K

Id: _8sZ8tAkoNk

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019