What did the hippie say to the horse? Woooaahh. What the figurative hippie said to the car is an entirely more ambiguous matter…
After all, if you ask the most stereotypical members of the counterculture how they feel about cars, they’ll likely preach about capitalism, oil dependence, environmentalism and the simple joys of bicycling… before driving off in (depending on their sub-genus) either a Prius, biodiesel Benz W123, Volvo 240, Subaru Loyale, or ancient Volkswagen. But then, this automotive ambivalence is hardly unique to any cultural clique anymore, is it? As I depart for an annual weekend of hippie indulgence at the famous Oregon Country Fair (though a vast gulf divides me from the typical hippie on questions of economics, politics, and hygiene, I consider myself an “ethnic” or “non-practicing” hippie), I’m wondering how TTAC’s Best And Brightest interpret the impact of the 60s counterculture on automobiles. Pleases note: this is not an invitation to wallow in pure stereotype… check out the video of The Doors’ Jim Morrison caning his Shelby GT500 for proof that hippies are not all created equal.
I, for one, nominate biodiesel as an important component in the automotive landscape that would not be as widely known were it not for the hippies. It’s not a perfect solution, it’s not a fuel that can replace gasoline on a broad scale, but it allows individuals more dedicated to principle than practicality (a good working definition of the modern hippie) to enjoy cars without the bummers associated with fossil fuels. Will you see me diving into the grease dumpster outside a Chinese restaurant anytime soon? Not likely. But for those who care more about their personal impact on the world than I, biodiesel technology is one of the most satisfying hair shirts available, allowing transportation on recycled fuel.
Your definition of a hippie is a very good one. Loved it.
Now, the video just shows/reminds one how cool Jim and the Doors actually were/are.
I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but it’s hard to think of Morrison as cool after reading a couple of books about the Doors, including Danny Sugarman’s account. Jim Morrison was talented and charismatic and he treated everybody in his life with disregard. As good as their music was, I have a hard time enjoying it now that I know what a sh it Morrison was in real life.
Its not just the Loyale that has been embraced by hippies but sundry Forresters and Outbacks sporting bike racks and liberal bumper stickers. There is one guy here in Truckee who has an old GL with a “Legends of Reggae” graphic wrap on it.
enewable energy has a broad constituency.
I’m more Ron Paul than Nader when it comes to politics and I’m a big proponent of biodiesel. R One of the reasons I purchased my Liberty CRD was to run bio.
In many ways BioDiesel is the anti-ethanol. With current technology it can be mass produced without driving up food prices as much. With the excpetion of the USDM spec 2.0 VW TDI most engines run the same or better than they would with conventional diesel. Locally most of the folks I know using Bio are putting it in their 1-ton Pickups.
Tried to edit previous post, but wasn’t allowed. So sorry for double post.
As to the hippies themselves, they were never really revelant in Brazil. Most of them were fashion hippies, but didn’t really take much from the lifestyle except some of the drugs and sex. In both cases, Brazil was at the time of the hippies much more conservative than America. So there was some liberation, but the real sexual revolution came later.Maybe in Disco times.
And hippies from that time really don’t exist. In my mind I think they’d be driving some VW bus/kombi, very beat-up and dirty. In reality as the “hippies” of yore were mainly from the upper classes in Brazil, they’re nowadays driving anything from Toyota Coroolas to BMWs and Mercedes (depending on success in life, but beware a Corolla in Brazil is for upper executives!).
“depending on success in life, but beware a Corolla in Brazil is for upper executives!”
Fantastic… you fell in the same trap as we did: Toyota=Luxury car, and so an upper executive thinks that having a POS Corolla… he has a great car.
FAIL
@Stingray
Buenas noches!
Like I say on my next article (to be up soon, most likely tomorrow), for those who know better, the emperor is naked!
Heck, even in our market there are better cars than the Corolla and cost less. But those execs of which we speak have drunk the Toyo-kool-aid and Honda, too. And they can’t seem to shake it off.
What a shame!
Toyota marketing does an excellent job in brainwashing people. 1st step: Toyota is quality. LOL
And I guess they’re expensive too…
I’ve seated in a Megane II and it’s interior quality blows the Corolla away. Even the current one.
The Focus (kinetic one) looks far better than the Corolla. Although the Civic has the futuristic cab forward look.
I know whenever I hang out with my brother-in-law in Brazil (he knows only a few words of English and I know only conversational Portuguese) that he will point out ALL Toyotas, Hondas, Subarus, BMW’s, etc and rub his forefinger and thumb together and say “RICH!”
I can’t wait until he comes here & sees they are a dime a dozen…
When the relatives ask about my car I have to explain that the Subaru I have is a normal “middle” class car and I am not actually rich. I believe last time I looked MSRP for a WRX in Brazil was like $200k reais (at ~ 1.7-1.8/dollar). Seriously — more than a house in most of Brazil!
To say hippies put “principle over practicality” is a questionable statement. Environmentalism, sustainability, and organic agriculture are associated with hippies, and on a long term time scale with oil becoming harder to get and in higher demand, all of those things are essential. Of course, if you believe in abiogenic oil or think China and India won’t be using a lot of oil in the future, you can say hippies are not being practical. In “practical” economics, the environment is seen as providing nothing essential and providing it for almost free. In “principled” environmentalism, it’s recognized that without a healthy environment, we don’t have food, water, or air.
Ranting aside, the hippie footprint on cars is hard to pin down. Biodiesel you mentioned. The environmental movement that went mainstream is to some extent a product of the hippies, and from that flows the Prius and its ilk. Other than that, well, they are a tiny subculture now. The Bug and the move to smaller cars is in general could be called part of the hippie thing, but it had more to do with gas price volatility than anything else, and has been mostly reversed. I really can’t say. Vans?
Most of the hippies I know (in the education profession) either fall into one of two categories: Driving new and efficient (Prius or Elantra) or they drive something ancient and bike as much as possible (20 year old Toyota or Subaru.)
Jim only used the hippies as camouflage.
Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. The future’s uncertain and the end is always near…
When i think of hippies i think of the VW van .Brightly painted and with a peace sign and when the door was slid open all that smoke rolled out .
I think i may have watched to many Cheech and Chong movies :)
I still drive a car with a carb, dual exhaust and an 8 track. I guess I smoked too much pot.
Did Ed just call Goolsby a hippie?
I’m anything but!
I’m not old enough to be a hippie. I didn’t grow up until the 80s for one. Yes, I make my own fuel for the daily driver fleet, but that’s only because I’m cheap! I also like the engineering challenge and self-sufficiency. Besides, my other car is an E-type Jaguar… not really a hippie-mobile.
–chuck goolsbEE
Apologies on the misspell!
Hippies gave us camper cars that are well suited for long travels on modest budgets like the Vanagon and…. uhhhmm…. the Aztek?
Also, I think it could be argued that hippies begat what we now think of as The Granolas – iconoclastic, outdoorsy, organic, dog lovers. The Granolas, in their turn, made successes out of such cars as the Outback and Forester, pre-98 Passats (ok, not so much a success), the Jetta Trek model, the Isuzu Trooper II, and the previous generations of the CR-V.
Also, if one is willing to credit David Brooks (a sometimes iffy proposition), the hippies may also have begat the Bobos. Think more sybaritic Granolas – Restoration Hardware shoppers. These people gave us the SUV, which has morphed into the crossover, and euro-brand wagons (CTS wagon included).
Mr. Morrison is sitting waaaay too close to the wheel.
“Vanishing Point” is everybody’s favorite car chace movie, and while Kowalski was not exactly a hippie, the whole movie was heavily flavored by the 60’s counterculture. It was also spiced with Sartreian philosophy, which was another 60s fixture.
I remember reading in one review of Vanishing Point that Kowalski was classified as a “marginal man”. Not quite hippie, not quite blue collar establishment, he was living a little in both worlds. Kowalski had given up on the “system” after the system had rejected him as a cop and race car/motorcycle driver. By the time he was delivering the ’70 Challenger to San Francisco, he just didn’t care anymore, making the bet for the price of a handful of speed that he could drive the car to SFO by 1500 the next day, even though it wasn’t due until Monday morning.
Barry Newman stated in a magazine interview (Muscle Car Review I think) in 1986 that 5 cars were used – four with 440/4 speeds, and one 383/Auto for a chase camera car. However the DVD with Richard Safaran’s director’s comments said that 9 cars were used.
No matter how many times I watch that movie, I still thoroughly enjoy it. The British cut has the extra scene with the mysterious woman in the foggy nighttime. That scene was a little weird for me. However hearing the Challenger crank up the next (and last) morning after Kowalski woke up, backing the car up with exhaust burbling and transmission whine, and roaring off sounds pretty sweet.
Volkswagen was already well established when the hippie movement evolved…what I think the primary hippie contribution to the automobile was with brightly painted VW vans and the whole van conversion movement which eventually morphed into the minivans.
While Ethanol may be a fools errand, I wouldn’t discount biodiesel as a real alternative to fossil fuels in the future. I read a great article at one point that actually had a good bit of scientific data backing it up showing how we could easily grow enough hemp to meet our current diesel needs.
NulloModo , when i first read your post mentioning hemp on a article pertaining to hippies my mind sterotyped . So having not much knowledge of hemp other than the obvious use i went to Wikipedia .
This seems to be a amazing plant with a mulitude of uses . Everything from eating the seeds to the fiber used in ropes and fabrics, water and soil purification to the use as a fuel . There was even mention of Henry Ford having grown it .
So now i’m sitting here wondering why this isn’t being considered more as alternative fuel ?
KIM1963 – I am wearing Hemp Addidas Campus STs right now. I think it is not used more because there is a fear of abuse.
VW art cars. That was the main contribution. Go to motorlegends.com, click on art cars, and ultimately you’ll see some vw vans in Golden Gate Park on the occasion of Jerry Garcia’s death.
No self-respecting hippie (real hippie) would drive a Prius. The 240s, yes. Subaru Foresters (not the new one), and probably any old Subaru. Any old car that will drink biodiesel. But Prions are too new and too techie.
NulloModo: Although I’m real skeptical about any sort of biofuels
(go here http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2008/116-6/focus-abs.html/) I would love to read the article you’re citing. Could you email me a copy or a link to motorlegends@aol.com? Or if it’s a link, you could post it here. Thanks! David
Rural rustic “hippies” have, in my humble opinion, a tendency to acquire and keep older pre-computer (non-brain box) pick-up trucks used for paying tasks and personal transportation for kith and kin.
Urban “hippies,” depending upon situation such as availability of mass transit, etc. and personal choice, circumstances may be vehicle-less or opt for an el cheapo easy-to-repair clunker or whatever requires the least amount of mental concern.
Of course, exceptions always exist within any human “universe.”
And that’s my opinion based upon class considerations and with the firm conviction the USA is doomed and the many embedded societies within the USA are SICK and are doomed to destruction ans when the USA falls may it fall HARD though, sadly, the elites will assuredly scamper away to safety, sheltered by their fellow elites in other lands.
I’ll guess that they had a serious impact on the development and rise of car audio systems.
In another respect, when did the entire social stigma of a certain car with a certain lifestyle develop? Of course, there was always the car as a class or status symbol, but how did, say, one sedan come to mean its owner is a forward-thinking, creative, environmentally-conscious man of the world, while another, similarly-priced sedan meant its owner is a slope-headed neanderthal? It seems to have really emerged sometime in the 60s, but they may be due to the development of both cars and marketing.
Having owned a couple of VW buses, including one with the rear hatch hand lettered on the left with “Too Much” and on the right with “Magic Bus” (and a 1648cc dual port engine with a hot cam and a Holly Weber, Melling oil pump, and external oil filter, cooler and oil based interior heater – that I built myself), plus holding a patent on a bong, I think I know of what I speak when it comes to hippies and cars.
If you look at back editions of Mother Earth News (I think they’re mostly available online) you’ll find a lot of alternative energy ideas that percolated and eventually reached the market in some way.
Here’s an early serial hybrid.
Reading that article makes me a little sick. To think that a backyard tinkerer using off the shelf parts could come up with a vehicle that would use that much less fuel and fulfill the driving needs of 90% of the population over 30 years ago… have to go lie down.
Car companies have chased young buyers since the pony cars of the 1960s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a number of trim packages that attempted to evoke a hippie sensibility. I’m not sure that I’d include the Dodge Dude in that group, but there were some hippieish tape and trim cars and trucks. I think Dodge did an early van package with hippie looking graphics.
Here’s a Porsche 917 from 1970 that’s been called the “Hippie Porsche” because of its paint job – done in the pits just before the race, according to Sven Voelker’s Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars.
Hippies brought us some interesting Curbside Classics, something we can all be thankful for.
Most of the hippies grew up and became yuppies. They, the hippies, also fire a couple of government people during Nixon which promptly made Nixon to enact the EPA. That probably resulted a push for more mpg and better air quality.
Nixon actually enacted the EPA because he thought it was good politics. He was reading public opinion polls and saw that large groups of people (possibly due to hippies) were concerned about the environment. Nixon saw it as an emerging issue, one that believe it or not, he thought the republicans could own if they acted first.
Strange, but true.
Neb: More Nixon Admin papers were released recently. Among them was a memo from Daniel Patrick Moynahan, then a Nixon aide and advisor on Urban Issues, warning about warming due to carbon build-up in the atmoshpere…
Morrison never considered himself a “hippie”. For one thing, Morrison despised people who didn’t work for a living. It’s not easy to pigeonhole a guy like Morrison.
Hippies did for cars what they did for the rest of our culture. They demonstrated that there was so much wealth that some could live off the excess and “drop-out”. Not only did Hippies embrace the VW, a small car with cheap operating costs, they also demonstrated that old cars could be had cheap. Old hearses, vans, even limos were converted to use and given brightly colored designs as transport that could be obtained cheaply. In the 60’s gas was still a relatively cheap commodity and older cars could be repaired rather inexpensively. The lasting effect of the Hippies was the idea that one could live well without having to be a slave to a culture that demanded ever more work in order to consume more.
I think you nailed it. Hippies were the children of the post-WWII consumer culture. VW, and especially the unique ads, appealed to those fed up with it. Being of that generation, and seeing my dad buy that ’59 Chevy as a fashion statement, the VW became a different kind of statement of my own. While never “dropping out”, I married a Birkenstock-wearing, VW-driving gal.
If you’re not going to go for easy potshot stereotypes, then that makes things harder. -I’m sure there were several strata of hippies.
Tinkering & DIY-culture from the hippie-engineers were 2 good things they did for cars; just out of financial necessity, I guess.
I’m sure they had a hand in some improvement of the environment through the frugality of their “recycling” of the old & used. -Again, I think it was for income reasons in the beginning and not political grandstanding.
*Hippies of course spawned the fascist, self-righteous eco-mentalists & what would become The Smug.
The European hippies preferred Citroen 2CV or Renault R4. VW (except for the bus) was considered far too bourgeois. There were practical reasons, as well. Whoever tried to have sex in the two-door, cramped VW will understand.
I would argue with the “dedicated to principle than practicality” definition – maybe “unmotivated hedonists” would be more accurate. As for their contribution to cars – they have pretty much done for cars what they have done for anything except themselves: very little.
If it weren’t for hippies, the world may never have experienced the grooviness of the Dodge Dart Hang Ten!
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/08/ebay-find-of-the-day-1974-dodge-dart-hang-ten-is-gnarly-dude/
Is my assumption that the video clip is an actor too obvious or am I missing something here? I saw the program on PBS and drew that conclusion right away.
Others have touched on the points I’m going to make, but what the heck-
Hippies have left their mark on the auto by giving us cleaner tailpipe emissions and higher MPGs (though perhaps that benefit was largely lost during the SUV craze)
Hippies spearheaded the environmental movement, and it became mainstream.
This song went to #1 on both the pop and country charts
in 1975, and eventually became the basis of a movie starring
Kris Kristofferson as ‘Rubber Duck’. I think the line about the hippie van was the most memorable:
C.W. MCCALL
“Convoy”
Well we shot the line, an’ we went for broke
With a thousand screamin’ trucks
And eleven long-haired friends of Jesus
In a chartreusse microbus.
A VW T4 (1990s) camper van still costs $20-30k in North America. Middle-class hippies are very much alive.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=eurovan+camper&srchType=A