There's Hope For Todayنموونە

In the year of my birth, even the homely Rambler had tail fins. 1959 was the peak year for useless and gaudy auto design. Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford and American Motors stretched the average car by an average foot and a half in length, and a half-ton in weight.

Harley Earl is recognized as the father of the tail fin. He was an eccentric designer, but you already knew that if you have laid eyes on a ‘59 Cadillac. Earl was employed for one purpose: to make Americans believe that last year’s design was out-of-date.

Tail fins did the trick, and Detroit produced metal monsters that caused a Methodist bishop to bellow, “Who are the madmen who built cars so long they cannot be parked and are hard to turn in corners, vehicles with hideous tail fins, full of gadgets and covered with chrome, so low that an average human being has to crawl in the doors and so powerful that no man dare use the horsepower available?” The madmen knew the marketing power of discontent.

Take a minute and catalog your desires. Do you really need the biggest and best, or are you off chasing tail fins and gadgets? When desire trumps design, we’re apt to end up in the land of the bizarre!