product: cars

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight discusses the “Cash for Clunkers” program. There has been a fair amount of criticism of the fact that the program, which is supposed to stimulate the economy partly by providing a boost to the auto industry, has been used by consumers to buy a large number of non-U.S.-made cars (which, of course, is a slippy definition–there are Toyota and Honda plants in the U.S. and Ford plants in Mexico, but by “U.S.-made,” people generally refer to Ford, GM, and I guess Chrysler).

But the other point of the Cash for Clunkers program was to increase the gas mileage of the U.S. auto fleet overall.  The new car you can apply the federal aid to has to get at least 22 mpg. And because of choices the U.S. auto companies have made in the past about what kinds of cars and trucks to emphasize, a smaller proportion of the models Ford, GM, and Chrysler offer qualify for the program:

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Of course, this graph doesn’t tell us how popular each of the models are–if GM only had one model that got more than 22 mpg, but that one model was incredibly popular, the company might have an average fleet fuel efficiency that was relatively good. And if Chrysler had a lot more models available than Honda, it might have more 22+ mpg models total even though they’re a lower percentage of all Chrysler cars.

Still, I found the graph shocking; 22 mpg seems like such a low benchmark, I never would have guess than less than 1 in 5 U.S. models manages to meet it. Hopefully the Cash for Clunkers will have a longer-term effect of encouraging the U.S. automakers to emphasize fuel efficiency to a much greater degree than they’ve been doing (and U.S. consumers to buy their fuel efficient models).

The graphic below is interesting to me in light of the discourse about greenhouse gas emissions.  We often hear about emissions from cars and sometimes about emissions from industry.  I was surprised, then, to see that electricity and heat was such a large contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.  And I feel like land use change and agriculture hardly get discussed at all.

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Graphic borrowed from ChartPorn, which also has an interactive graphic that breaks down emissions by country (via Simoleon Sense).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Ann S. sent us this promotional photograph of Beyonce.  In it, I think, she is wearing something which is supposed to be a motorcyle that she is then riding.  !?

So she is a motorcycle and she is riding herself?  This is such a mess of objectification that I cannot bring it into focus:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

In lieu of commentary, I am just going to transcribe the text of this ad, sent in by The Sexual Buzz:

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Question: Why won’t your wife let you buy this wagon?

“It looks like a bus.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”

Do these sound familiar?  Your wife is not alone.  It is hard to convince some women what sense the VW Station Wagon makes.

It’s chunky shape, for instance, allows it to hold more than the biggest conventional wagon.  (Yet it is a good four feet shorter, and a lot less exasperating to park.)

She might like the easy way it loads.  The side doors give her almost 16 sq. ft. for big supermarket bags, a baby carriage, etc.

The Volkswagen Station Wagon does not have to take anything lying down.  She can cart home an antique chest, standing up.  Or delicate trees from the nursery.  (Wide things, too.  It will hold an open playpen.)

She can comfortably pack in eight or more Scouts, with all their cook-out gear.

She can give the family some extra sun on the way to the beach.  (Why no other station wagon has a sun-roof is a mystery.)

Even if the traffic is bumper to bumper on hot days, she will not have to worry about the radiator boiling over.  There is no radiator, no water.  (The Volkswagen engine is air cooled.)

She may get a kick out of beeping to the other women who drive VW Station Wagons.  (They have a kind of private club.)

Or maybe she likes to see where she is going. (The VW wagon has incredible visibility on hills and curves.)

If these facts don’t convince her, tell her it’s only $2655 and you aren’t made of money.

UPDATE! Commenter jfruh had a nice observation:

Interesting in that vans (and the VW Bus pretty much was the first van) are now fully feminized in the US, associated with “soccer moms.” I’m guessing a gendered van ad today would involve a wife extolling just these sorts of practical features to convince her husband to buy a “wimpy” van instead of the sports car that he wants.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.


Jason S. sent in this (pretty hilarious) three-minute “ad” for Zima.  While modern motherhood takes many different forms, the ad is a great illustration of one stereotype of the modern mother:

So, according to the ad, moms…

1. …are middle class. She and her husband can afford a nice, new minivan.

2. …provide their children with active social and educational lives. Since they live in the suburbs, she spends a lot of time shuttling them from place to place.

3. …are frazzled. Likely a full time wage worker and the primary care taker for the children, the condition of the inside of the minivan suggests that she does not have time to clean or organize her family’s life.

4. …feed their kids fast food (french fries) because, being overwhelmed, she doesn’t have time to feed them what she’d thinks they should eat.

5. …have husbands who still take on the masculine jobs but, being white collar workers, no longer have the skill to effectively perform them.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Jim C. sent us this graphic designed to illustrate a proposal to reduce the lanes on Jarvis Street in Toronto from five to four (Globe and Mail, May 22, 2009, p. A12).   As Jim points out, the text of the graphic describes the proposal accurately, and even points out that the graphic misrepresents the change, but the graphic itself still gives the impression that the reduction will be to two, not four lanes.

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It is a good example of how much graphics matter. Even with the text, it is potentially misleading.  Such misrepresentation can also be purposeful and political.  Jim speculates that this is the case here:

As is often the case whenever there are modest efforts to make space on city streets for pedestrians and cyclists, right-wing councillors (and affluent commuters) raised the spectre of traffic chaos and a ‘war on the car’.

If you’re interested in comparing the representation of this proposal by the Globe with its representation in the proposal itself, check out the final page of the proposal.  Thanks to Nick J. B. in the comments for the link.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Chris S. sent in a link to a post at Korea Beat about a town in South Korea that now has parking spots designated for women only. My first thought was that maybe they were for pregnant women–when I lived in Utah I’d sometimes see parking spots that were reserved for expectant mothers. But no. These are just for women in general. Here’s a photo:

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Part of the English translation of the original article, from Korea Beat:

The “pink lines”, painted pink, are 2.5 meters wide rather than the standard 2.3, offering aid to women drivers unskilled at parking.

This in a city chosen by a South Korean official as “the first woman-friendly city.”

I wonder if there’s any evidence that female drivers in South Korea are involved in more accidents or have a harder time parking than men. What, exactly, led to this? I don’t know a ton about South Korean culture; for those of you who do, is there a good reason we’d expect women to be less skilled at driving/parking than men? Are women generally discouraged from driving or something? Insights will be greatly appreciated.

NEW! (July ’10): Majd Al-Shihabi sent us a photo of similar parking spaces in Croatia. They are next to the parking spaces for those with disabilities and are about 50% wider than standard spaces:

The desperate economic situation of Detroit, Michigan is in the headlines these days.  From the New York Times:

In one sign of distress, in the first nine months of this year [2008], some 130,000 Michigan residents who had lost their jobs remained out of work so long that they ran out of regular unemployment benefits. By the middle of this month, 63,000 people (who had already run out of their ordinary maximum benefit — as many as 26 weeks, at as much as $362 a week) also ran out of an extension authorized by Congress.

This figure shows the unemployment and forclosure rate in Michigan as of Oct. 2008.  It shows that Michigan in general, and Detroit especially, is doing much worse than the national average:

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Today’s numbers reflect not just the current recession, but 30 years of decline.  A figure from Spiegel reveals that the marketshare of U.S. automakers have been steadily dwindling:

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Spiegel reports that the city has lost more than half its inhabitants since the 1950s (from close to 2 million, to 917,000 in 2009).  The tax base has plummeted and city services, in turn, have been cut.

The conditions in Detroit are dire, and they contrast greatly with the city in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Then, Detroit’s shipping and manufacturing economy, innovative for its time, made it a rich and vibrant city.  Today, the ruins of that vibrancy still occupy the city.

Detroit’s main train station, opened in 1913 has not been used since 1988:

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Constructed in 1893 in the once-elegant Brush Park neighborhood, this home, designed by architect Albert Kahn, was moved from its original location several years ago by preservationists who hoped to preserve it. It was demolished last year:

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Many of the city’s Catholic schools have been closed, though the churches they are affiliated with remain active:

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One of the city’s most prominent skyscrapers, this 35-story tower once housed the offices of many doctors, lawyers and dentists. It has been virtually empty since the 1980s. Developers hope to convert the building to residential units by 2010:

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This spectacular Spanish Gothic theater, built in 1928, was closed in the 1970s:

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Once one of the most luxurious residential hotels in Detroit, Lee Plaza closed in the 1990s:

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The Farwell Building:

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Photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre write: Detroit’s “splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.”

Images first found here.