Big American Car, circa 1962 Print

I remember referring to these big American cars as "boats." We'd borrow the boat from someone's parents and drive out in a snowstorm to the nearest ski area. The car would bowl through the drifts on the road like a battleship in heavy seas. A perfect metaphor for the imperviousness and power we felt during the heyday of the American century. Other cars fled from us for good reason. I like the couple at the helm in this behemoth, each in their fur collar and hat, and big glasses like another windshield; I count five in all. I could rewrite the holiday song Over The River and Through the Wood with an Olds instead of a sleigh. My first car, of course, was a Volkswagen Beetle, with no defrost and no heat and a hole in the floor, which I drove hundreds of miles to Lutsen and Hardscrabble when I was writing for Skiing magazine. This drawing is an homage to another era, when the big vehicles had elan and flair and were driven by Rockefeller Republicans. Today's Big American Cars are unstreamlined and vaguely fascist.