The future of the automotive past – What’s on the agenda in automotive heritage?
A Green Paper * for the Historic Vehicle Association
Michael Shanks, Stanford University.
“Green paper” — a summary report and consultation document for debate and discussion, with a view to policy, implementation, action.
From hobby to heritage — the scenario
The automobile is changing — fast, and in a big way. No one doubts that the automobile was a defining feature of the twentieth century, nor that cars and experiences of driving are evolving in radical ways, with new power trains and fuels, intelligent robotic cars that drive themselves, car sharing replacing personal ownership, with the car as but another mobile media device, connected with all the information technology in the internet of things.
A key observation is that in spite of the car being at the heart of modern life, the history of the automobile has been neglected, with few overarching accounts of how the automobile shaped the twentieth century. The academic study of the history and culture of the automobile is a backwater. The cars themselves are neglected: in spite of a growing market for classic cars, preservation and conservation of what may be called automotive heritage is piecemeal, underdeveloped, under thought, under resourced. Why might this be? Do we not risk losing hold on what shaped the 20th century, failing to understanding key features of the automotive industry, the experiences of automobility, the forces that drive automotive history? Is it possible for designers and engineers to wipe the slate clean in pursuit of new automotive futures? Might the designers of automobiles and their corporations break with the past? What of the continuities that will underlie the changes associated with the rise of the robot car?
What does this evolution mean for older cars, for car collecting (from high end classics of the 1930s to 1960s muscle cars), for car museums, for those enthusiasts who want to be able to maintain and drive their ’55 Chevy thirty years hence? Enthusiasm for old cars remains largely a hobby, and major automotive museums are in private or charitable hands. Is a care for the automotive past going to spread beyond the collector? Is the hobby going to become a more institutionalized concern, part of the authorized heritage industry? How? What is to be done with the future of the automotive past?
The evolution of the automobile raises questions of how we care about history, if at all. Matters of conservation and preservation, and much more — how does an understanding of where we have come from orient us, whether corporate leader, designer, car owner, driver, or passenger, on the possible futures of automobility? The history of the automobile is all about the future.
Objectives — HVA and beyond
To bring the latest of thinking and practice in heritage studies, cultural resource management, museum studies and conservation to bear on a new challenge — the future of the automotive past.
To investigate how the history of the automobile and its remains in the present, specifically the legacy of more than a century of industrial production, economic and political ramification, and of popular experience, offers orientation on the future of mobility.
New insights are implicated that demand response and action. The development of automotive heritage prompts key questions about the future of collecting, conserving complex machinery, devices, technology systems in museums or elsewhere, about the infrastructures needed to keep old automobiles running, about the shape of a heritage industry that adequately witnesses popular history and experience. The evolution of the automobile prompts questions of how the past influences the future of mobility, in the work of the urban planner, in the design and manufacture of mobility systems.
Here are the key topics in this agenda, and four implicated academic fields, followed by a definition of the concept of heritage.
Topic. The shape of history
Are we witnessing the end of the automotive world as we have known it? Is the history of the automobile and its intimate association with the internal combustion engine now over? Are we at an inflection point in the history of technology? Is the automobile so wrapped up in the information technology revolution that we are seeing the birth of new kinds of automobility? Are we seeing younger generations increasingly alienated from the kinds of mobility we associate with the automobile in the 20th century? Is this the beginning of the era of the robot car?
Proposition. When automotive technology is put into context, when cars are understood not as a means of transport but as aspects of mobility, as part of the manifestation of peoples identities and quests for agency and autonomy, as part of the political economy and cultural history of the twentieth century, we can track profound continuities even as indeed the technologies of automobility (artificial intelligence, new fuel systems, new modes of ownership and use) evolve and change.
What next? Whatever the mix of continuity and discontinuity in the future of the automobile, there is a strong case to be made to care for the automotive past. On two related counts. First. The automobile was a key feature of the twentieth century. Second. The automobile has been and remains for many a defining feature of personal and indeed cultural identity. We all need a past that’s our own. With heritage appropriately conceived as a human right, the automotive past requires attention, concern and care. This applies to those concerned with cultural policy and to those designing future mobility systems.
Topic. Sustainable futures for personal mobility
Is the automobile facing extinction, as robot computers-on-wheels take over their dominant niche in transport ecologies? Are we facing a shift to new industries that abandon or radically reconfigure the investment in materials, technologies and infrastructures that went with the automobile of the twentieth century? What are to be the environmental consequences of reshaping such a vast industry? How might we use an understanding of the history of the automotive past to help us make a more environmentally sound transition to new automotive futures?
Proposition. Consider the place of old buildings in the built environment. Over the last couple of decades modifying old buildings has become more environmentally sound than demolishing them and replacing them with state-of-the-art green tech. Might not the same be true of cars? When seat belts became legally required, we didn’t just trade in all of the old cars for new: many people installed seat belts in their old cars. This will work with fuel efficiency, sustainability and with all the other new dimensions of future mobility, but it will depend upon a conservation attitude that sees the value of the old in the new.
What next? How might we adapt the old to new needs and possibilities? The challenge to the automotive designer and corporation is to consider how to make more use of the old in a managed transition to environmentally sustainable futures.
What next? As well-established car corporations come to compete and work with new IT companies investing in mobility systems, a key factor will be taking the past seriously and adapting old to new, especially given the emotional and cultural attachments to the automobile, established in over a century of human experience.
Topic. The intangible importance of automotive history
Why should anyone care about old cars?
How might we understand recent and contemporary history through the remnants of one of its key artifacts — the automobile and all that it represents? Can automotive heritage ever be cool and fashionable? Appealing to younger Uber-using generations?
Proposition. Cars are stories about us. Cars are not just metal boxes on four wheels – they are the way people make history. In this cars are indeed a key component of contemporary identity.
What comes next? A challenge is to monitor and manage how the connections between automotive heritage and identity evolve. Those committed to automotive heritage need to show how people make history through their automotive experiences. Those in automotive design and manufacture will do well to attend to the intangible human qualities that continue to underlie experiences of mobility.
Topic. The future of the automotive museum
Why do car museums seem to struggle when compared with, for example, art museums?
Is there a future for small private collections?
Proposition. The value and importance accorded to cars is all to do with cultural capital. Cars have been associated with utility and popular culture. Cars have also become culturally invisible because of their ubiquity. The future of automotive heritage will thus hinge on the renegotiation of the cultural significance of the automobile. Archives and collections are only sustainable when they are institutionalized, in all senses.
What next? Raising the cultural value of automotive heritage will involve incorporating automotive experience into mainstream academic and cultural discourse. A discipline and professional field of automotive studies is needed.
What next? The future of automotive heritage will hinge on the degree to which it is institutionalized as part of local, national and international policy and regulation.
Topic. Conservation and preservation
How might we preserve and conserve automobiles?
Is there a future for old cars when they no longer can run? Is the materiality, authenticity, the objective truth of an automobile compatible with, for example, augmented and virtual realities which offer “synthetic” driving experiences.
Proposition. Cars are a different order of object to be curated and displayed. They are as much about performance as appearance, memories and experiences as engineering.
Proposition. Automotive heritage, if it is to appeal and prosper beyond already committed enthusiasts, needs to recognize cars are bundles of components and experiences, assemblages of tangibles and intangibles that need animating and incorporating in stories.
Proposition. Automotive heritage should consider and compare the conservation and preservation of the built environment, where buildings are treated as dynamic systems, changing as they take on new interests and uses.
Proposition. The future of the automotive past depends upon (re)animation, through storytelling, or whatever other means, including digital synthetic media. Automotive heritage will depend upon the vitality of such animation and storytelling, and not upon how well a car is preserved or how often it runs round a track.
What next? Automotive museums need to involve an acknowledgment of intangible heritage (memories, stories, people’s identities), as part of what cars are. Priority needs to be given to experiment with vital animation and storytelling.
What next? Designers and corporations will do well to build such rich human experiences into new systems of mobility, acknowledging deep continuities in a celebration of futures attending closely to human needs and desires.
Topic. The heritage industry
How will automotive heritage fit into the heritage industry? In what ways is automotive heritage an asset? What is the future of the collectors’ market?
Proposition. Automotive heritage will grow as a component of the global heritage industry, in the same way as did industrial heritage and modern architecture.
Proposition. As with the antiquities market, old artifacts like cars will be subject to commodification; it is already the case that classic cars are worthwhile financial investments.
What next? A challenge for those who wish to retain the richness of automotive heritage is to retain cultural values in the conservation and preservation of automotive heritage, to see beyond the automobile as artifact to be bought and sold. Such an objective would be in keeping with the acknowledgment of heritage by the likes of UNESCO as a set of cultural values that constitute a human right – heritage is central to personal, local, regional identities.
What next? Designers and corporations will do well to work with the added cultural value that comes with heritage and its relationship to personal and group identity, in the ways that heritage can be a vital component of rich human experiences.
Topic. Car design — human centered
Is the history of the automobile important to the design of future systems of mobility? How might the history of automotive design, manufacture and consumption offer orientation on its future? (See also Topic — Sustainable futures for personal mobility)
Proposition. Designing the future of mobility will be impoverished if account is not taken of what made mobility what it was. In the shift from cars as agents of our personal autonomy to autonomous agents in their own right, we need to understand the changing human experiences of social mobility, of how the car is central to our personal and cultural identities, transporting people into the future.
Proposition. We have seen the history of the automobile mobilized by car corporations to enhance their branding, their appeal to buyers by making reference to the history of rich relationships with automobiles as a means to establish a company’s authenticity and identity. This will expand as designers and corporations seek to mobilize the value inherent in human experience.
Proposition. One way to make this investment in cultural value is through human centered design. Design and manufacture have come increasingly to focus not upon product but upon experience. In the world of human centered design, experiences and relationships matter more than products and hardware. The design of mobility needs to be human centered, focused not just on technology, but on people’s relationships with what moves us, and that includes history and memories of what mobility was and can be.
What next? Human centered design. How might we pursue human centered design of systems of mobility that offer meaningful association with cultural values and human experiences that are deeply rooted in community and history, identity and belonging, and hopes for a better future?
The big questions in the future of the automotive past
The question of the future of the automotive past is not just the parochial concern of a few collectors and enthusiasts of automotive design.
Here are four transdisciplinary academic fields implicated in the future of the automotive past (transdisciplinary because they reach far beyond the academy into policy, practice and experience).
Heritage and Museum Studies. What is to be done with the remains of the past? The case of automotive heritage is raising all sorts of issues around how we conceive of heritage, and how we might manage the future of those material remnants of a defining feature of twentieth century experience. What insights are offered regarding the contemporary fascination with conservation, with caring for pasts-in-the-present? Or not caring. What does this all reveal for Heritage and Museum Studies generally? Questions of preservation, conservation, museums, collections, policy. What makes automotive heritage different, and a new challenge for heritage managers, for government agencies and ministries of culture, for public and private collections and enthusiasts? How do you conserve artifacts like cars, make them appeal to contemporary and future interest? Why should anyone care?