And she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the Civic away . . .
The best argument for a Big Three bailout isn’t economic – it’s cultural. What would the Beach Boys be without a T-Bird? Jay-Z without an Escalade? “Mustang Sally” with a Maxima? Americana itself is under siege!
Think how much pop music will need rewriting. Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels will become Mitch Ryder and the Tokyo Wheels. He’ll have to turn the 1967 smash “Sock it to Me Baby!” to “Sake to Me Baby!”
Chuck Berry managed to get to two(!) hard-driving Detroit stalwarts into “Maybellene” in 1955. “As I was motivatin’ over the hill/I saw Maybellene in a Coup de Ville/A Cadillac a rollin’ on the open road/Nothin’ will outrun my V8 Ford/The Cadillac doin’ about ninety-five/She’s bumper to bumper, rollin’ side by side.” You’d be hard-pressed calling Berry a father of rock ‘n’ roll if he’d been singing about a Kia Sportage and a Hyundai Accent. And would baby be much too fast for Prince in a “Little Red Camry”? “Drove my Chevy to the levee/but the levee was dry”? Sorry, Don McLean. How about, “Drove my Lexus to the nexus?”
Particularly hard hit will be Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen. When he revs up his engines in “Born to Run,” singing: “Sprung from cages out on Highway 9, Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the line,” he’s not referring to a Mazda Protégé.
We all know American car companies have made plenty of mistakes. But let’s not toss out the Buick with the bath water. While Springsteen sings, “Rides like a little bit of heaven here on earth,” in “Cadillac Ranch,” you know a Corolla wouldn’t inspire such hyperbole.
So let’s save Detroit. Don’t let rock ‘n’ roll go the way of the Yugo.