The Driver Robert Coucher

The appeal and otherwise of driving American cars - outside the US

- 

The US is big. Geographically and in ambition. Vast scale is embedded in the American Dream, from cowboys galloping across the prairies, to iron horses steaming on railway lines to new territories, and city office blocks reaching for the sky. Americans have always gone large and the automobile has been written into this frontiersmanship, from the Joad family leaving Oklahoma's dustbowl for California in the Great Depression (Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) to today's citizens who celebrate the car like no other, driving 13,500 miles per year; we manage 6500.

Following on from the horse and steam train, early American automobiles were generally excellent, starting with the Ford Model T of 1908. With its lusty 2.9-litre engine, its chassis was made of superior vanadium alloy, rendering it almost unbreakable over rough dirt roads. This was followed by GM's early adoption of independent 'knee action' front suspension in the 1930s, a time when British cars were asthmatic puddle-jumpers hampered by outdated cart suspension and little engines taxed on bore size. Motorists overtaxed? Plus ça change.