When a person looks at a car, they aren't just thinking about the engine, metal or plastic. We think about our desires and dreams, our fears and longings. We think about speed and escape, about closeness and loneliness. We think about youth, rebellion and asserting ourselves. We think about the road home and the desire to control our time and space. The car has always stood as a promise of freedom, independence and control over one's own life — even if critics try to downplay or erase its meaning.

It's important to understand that public transportation can never be a universal solution. It requires a collective schedule and shared discipline that only suits a portion of people. A car, by contrast, represents individual freedom of choice — it doesn't force anyone to submit to the logic of collectivism.

This isn't just a technical difference; it reflects fundamentally different social arrangements: on one side, the right to individual decision-making and autonomy; on the other, a collective rhythm and its inherent limitations. The car isn't simply a more convenient option — it is, at its core, a different order, a regime of individual self-determination.

The symbolism of the car has roots deep in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford created his Model T: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude." That sentence wasn't just a production plan — it was a cultural manifesto. The car was meant to belong to everyone: the laborer and the teacher, not just the aristocrat or the industrialist. It was democracy on wheels. Whereas people once relied on train schedules, horse-drawn carriages or simply their own feet, for the first time, a person could truly say: "I'm going where I want, when I decide to go."

America's vast landscapes made the car a natural part of the national narrative. As early as the 1910s, advertising encouraged Americans to explore the country by car — "See America first, by motor car." The road itself became a symbol. The highway wasn't just a strip of concrete; it was a new cathedral of freedom.

One of the most influential cultural thinkers of the 20th century, French essayist Roland Barthes, once wrote that in his view, "modern cars are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: they are the supreme creation of their era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and even if they are not used for their intended purpose, they are consumed visually and by everyone — making them magical objects."

He saw the iconic Citroën DS, created in the 1950s, as a kind of otherworldly being fallen from the sky. In Barthes' eyes, a car was not merely a piece of technology — it was an aesthetic and sacred object, a machine around which the modern person's faith in progress gathered.

Youth, rebellion and the smell of gasoline

If the 1950s in America gave rise to suburban sprawl and white houses with neatly trimmed lawns, the latter half of the decade offered young people an entirely different interpretation. James Dean in his red Ford in "Rebel Without a Cause" wasn't just an actor — he embodied what it meant for a machine to become a symbol of rebellion. Chuck Berry sang about "Maybellene," a girl, a car and a chase in which speed, desire and freedom merged into one. The car was no longer about family comfort — it became an extension of the body, a vehicle for sexual and existential defiance.

This is also where the entire road movie genre began. "Easy Rider," in 1969 — though on motorcycles — cemented the same archetype: the open road as freedom, even if it leads to ruin. The road was both promise and curse, but always a symbol of autonomy.

The oil crisis of the 1970s suddenly exposed just how fragile that illusion really was. Freedom turned out to be directly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Suddenly, gas stations were empty and people were lining up. But even that didn't destroy the car as a symbol of freedom. On the contrary, the crisis reinforced the car as humanity's inescapable dependency.

David Gartman, an American sociologist known for studying the cultural meaning of the automobile, has called the car a "national narcotic." Freedom and dependence became entangled and people could no longer live without the machine — even as they realized it made them vulnerable.

Post-socialist rerun

While in Western societies the car had already become a symbol of freedom and status by the 1950s, the same story played out in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. In Estonia, owning a BMW or a Mercedes came to mean something far beyond a mode of transportation — it was a kind of passport, a sign that you had made it from the world of scarcity economics into the West.

If someone scoffs today at Estonia's "car cult" of the 1990s, they either forget or never knew that this wasn't some quirky local phenomenon, but a repetition of what had happened in the West half a century earlier. In post-socialist culture, the car became a so-called "transition icon," a symbol of liberation, and there was nothing shameful about that then, nor is there now.

By the 2000s, major cities were becoming increasingly congested, but car advertisements continued to speak the language of freedom. Jeep declared, "Go Anywhere, Do Anything." Volvo promised, "Freedom to move." Toyota ran campaigns with slogans like "Where Freedom Meets Family" and "Unlock Your Freedom." It was the semiotics of "potential freedom" — even if you were just commuting to work and back, the car carried with it the promise that, if necessary, you could go over mountains or across the desert. An SUV in a parking lot became like a hunted animal mounted on a wall — but under the right conditions, it might still "come alive."

French anthropologist Marc Augé called highways and gas stations "non-places." Yet it was precisely these "non-places" that became the most characteristic cultural spaces for the modern human being.

Moral reprogramming

The 2010s brought a moral shift. The car, once a symbol of freedom, came under pressure from environmental and climate policy. And yet, that symbol of freedom never disappeared — and still hasn't.

Tesla introduced the narrative of clean freedom: you could drive and feel guilt-free. Toyota's "Make The Move" campaign encouraged people to try electric and hybrid vehicles and experience what it called "electrified freedom." Toyota also framed this within its broader global vision of "Mobility for All," meaning that freedom of movement should be accessible to everyone, regardless of age, health or place of residence. That includes a range of solutions — from hybrid and hydrogen-powered cars to electric wheelchairs, ride-sharing platforms and autonomous services.

Freedom no longer just means choosing your fuel or engine type; it means the right to decide for yourself which mode of transportation best serves your needs. This vision confirms that the car, as an archetype, is expanding into a holistic ecosystem of mobility. The concept of freedom remains — it's simply being adapted to a new, more morally conscious framework.

It's also worth noting that alongside these changes, a counterculture emerged with its back straight and head held high. Muscle cars, drift culture and the dizzying success of the Fast & Furious franchise showed that the gasoline engine had become a symbol of resistance. The car became simultaneously an icon of morality and of rebellion.

In the 2020s, talk began to shift toward "15-minute cities" and car-free living. But the statistics tell a different story. According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), 82 percent of European households own a car. Car usage isn't declining — it's growing. People like freedom. For most, freedom remains a core value.

Anti-car discourse is, in reality, the voice of a vocal minority. American scholar Peter D. Norton, who has studied urban planning and mobility history, points out in his book "Fighting Traffic" that strong car-phobia already existed in the U.S. as early as the 1920s. But once the majority became car owners, that sentiment faded. The same pattern is repeating now: car-free days are championed by a critical minority, while the silent majority — who need and love their cars — remains quiet.

And that brings us to the heart of the matter. If, for over a century, the car has been an icon of freedom, rebellion, modernity — and a practical necessity — then the anti-car stance is not just a technical opinion about traffic or emissions. It is, at its core, a culturally oppositional act. It's no coincidence that many of the same people defending this view also support throwing soup at paintings in art galleries. The soup-thrower isn't arguing about artistic merit or technique — they are attacking a cultural icon that symbolizes something larger.

The rejection of the car is fundamentally the same. It's not merely a condemnation of an inanimate vehicle; it is a denial of one of modern civilization's key symbols — and key functions. It is an attempt to erase a cultural layer that has fused together freedom, rebellion, identity and technology. The car is, and will remain, a symbol of freedom for as long as people desire to move, to decide and to be independent. And as long as that desire endures, so will the car as a cultural icon.

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