Jeremy R. Kinney, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)
Thursday, February 16, 2017 4:00 pm EST
Director’s Conference Room, 3rd Floor, National Air and Space Museum
America discovered the sports car immediately after World War II. These small lightweight two-seat cars, designed for the sheer sport of driving, originated from an international motorsports tradition rooted in Europe. Americans, many of them part of a newly affluent middle class, embraced the rapid acceleration, exceptional handling qualities, and the style of sports cars. In the process, they created a new transatlantic automotive lifestyle community with its own vernacular language, organizations, activities, and even fashion, much of it a direct reflection of its European origins, that persists to the early twenty-first century. This paper places “serious” vehicular leisure in the form of the sports car movement at the center of broader discussions about the automobile in post-World War II American culture. It aims to provide new perspectives on technological enthusiasm, national identity and memory, gender, class, ethnicity, consumerism, and the relationship between the international automobile industry and the federal government. The main body of evidence is published primary source material, which includes contemporary books, magazines, racing programs, newspapers, and film, and builds upon the work of historians of technology John Heitmann, Robert Post, and David Lucsko.
For further information, please contact: Tom Lassman at 202-633-2419; lassmant@si.edu.
NON-SMITHSONIAN VISITORS MUST RSVP NO LATER THAN 48 HOURS BEFORE THE SEMINAR. On the day of the seminar, please report to the South Security Desk at the Museum’s Independence Avenue entrance. Those holding SI ID badges may proceed directly to the Director’s Conference Room on the 3rd floor.