Mobility Humanities

A hallmark of the American century of the car is people known as automotive enthusiasts. This article asks: What is an enthusiast conceptually, and how is this enthusiasm organised empirically in grassroots and corporate car culture events? Undergirding this quest is the likelihood that a variety of conditions, not least increasing driver assistance technologies and perhaps eventually autonomous vehicles, will sever the multi-sensory engagement of enthusiasts and their cars, relegating enthusiasm in the future to a marginal pursuit of relatively few people. The article explores the concepts of subjectivity/self/identity, subcultural membership, lifestyles, hobbyists, fans and the special case of the car collector, who may be the paramount enthusiast. It then examines four examples of organised car culture,two grassroots (RADwood and Luftgekült) and two corporate (Hagerty and the Porsche Club of America [PCA]). The paper concludes with a call to analyse the phenomenological experience of automotive enthusiasm as a kind of corporeal-technological world view.