“See the USA in your Chevrolet”: Understanding North American Automobile Consciousness in 1950s to 70s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67436/llilj.2021v11i2.%25pKeywords:
North America; automobiles; car culture; American literature; suburbanisation; American roads,; advertisements; women drivers; Automobile consciousness.Abstract
The gendered marketing strategy of automobile industries in post Second World War America has been
studied by Margaret Walsh in her 2011 essay, “Gender and Automobility: Selling Cars to American women
after the Second World War.” Taking Walsh’s essay as a point of entry, this paper will look at the 1950s
and 60s print advertisements of the automobile manufacturing company, Chevrolet, and investigate how
print advertisements with captivating tag-lines (“See the USA in your Chevrolet”) entered the American
consciousness by reiterating (albeit subliminally) the necessity of owning a Chevrolet to travel across the
USA. This paper illustrates the automobile consciousness of America in the 1950s and 60s through an
analysis of Didion’s Play It as It Lays (1970) alongside the conscious curation of a car-culture through the
then-popular print advertisements of Chevrolet.
