SUGGESTIONS FOR TOPICS TO TEACH IN AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY CLASS
Dear Car Talk:
I own a Honda Fit that is included in the big air-bag recall. Honda has provided me with a loaner car while we wait for parts to fix the problem (thank you, Honda). When Honda gives you a loaner, you sign a statement agreeing not to drive your car at all. The recall notice from Honda also indicates that the Fit should not be driven until the repairs are made. My car has now been sitting in my garage for nearly three months. What damage might be happening to my car, if anything, because it has been sitting for so long? -- Fred
Great question, Russ.
As you might guess, there are 2 billion ways to approach this topic. So I’ll just give you one way you could potentially organize the lectures.Your first lecture or two could be about automotive technology. Keep in mind that the most interesting stuff happened in the early days of cars and in the past 30 or 40 years. Early on, you had the internal-combustion engine, the production assembly line, hydraulic brakes and the automatic transmission. And then there was a long period of time with very little meaningful innovation.
Then in the past few decades, spurred by the EPA and by higher gas prices, computerization and fuel injection have transformed fuel economy, emissions and reliability.
From there you can lecture on safety innovations over the years, which also have been revolutionized by computers. Tucker and Volvo had some early safety advances, which were mostly ignored. Then, in the 1960s, Ralph Nader started complaining about all the people getting killed in cars. That started a push for some amazing safety improvements, from mandatory 3-point seat belts to crumple zones, air bags, ABS, electronic stability control and, most recently, today’s pre-autonomous driving technologies.
Another lecture could be on our most popular cars. You could spend one session on big hits: the Model A, the late-’50s Chevy sedans, the Mustang, the VW Bug, the Honda Civic, the Toyota Camry. You can try to figure out why (styling? design? competitive advantages?) those cars were so popular -- and why some, like the ‘60s Mustangs, are still popular, even though they’re horrible cars when compared with even a modern-day Kia Rio.
You also could lecture on big flops, like the Edsel, the Pacer and the Aztek. You could talk about what the manufacturers thought they were improving, and why they turned out to be wrong.
And then your last lecture could be a look to the future, with fully autonomous cars and vehicle-to-vehicle communication to prevent accidents.
And by the way, Russ, if all that autonomous driving stuff works, it could put you auto-body guys out of business. So it’s good you’re branching out into academia.
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