Automobiles have played key roles in numerous movies over the past 50 years, reflecting our love affair with fast, powerful and stylish cars. Top car movies range from 1968’s Bullitt, featuring Steve McQueen and its famous chase scene, to 1973’s American Graffiti, about coming-of-age California teenagers cruising the strip and embracing rock and roll. Cars also play a prominent role in some great comedies, such as 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit and 1985’s Back to the Future.
All these movies highlight the central role automobiles played in America’s culture and economy from the 1960s to the 1980s. And every one of the cars in those movies is driven by a human.
Over those same years the global automobile fleet more than doubled to nearly 450 million vehicles. Today, an estimated one billion cars are roaming the world’s roads and, importantly, burning gasoline and diesel fuel. The demand for fuel has kept the world’s tanker fleet busy, and car-carrier ships, too.
THE GROWTH IN FUEL DEMAND
As the global automobile industry expanded over the years and shipped vehicles to every corner of the globe, fuel demand grew commensurately. In the late 1990s, a paper written by economists at NYU showed that, among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1960, slightly over half of the oil consumed was for non-transportation purposes. By 1973, the year of the first oil crisis, that number had grown to two-thirds of total oil consumption.
The fourfold increase in oil prices triggered by the 1973 crisis was followed six years later by the Iranian crisis, which led to a further doubling of prices. Those two price shocks slammed the growth in non-transportation oil use, which had been riding the wave of oil displacing coal in the industrial and power generation sectors.
What’s the best way to get a good deal on a $100,000 car? The options available these days range from picking it up at a discounted price directly at a factory in Europe to using your keyboard to hunt down the best bargain via the Internet, or even turning the entire car-buying process over to a savvy pro.
Let’s assume you’ve decided to reward yourself with an Audi R8 Spyder, a BMW M6, or a Porsche 911 Turbo. Dreaming of one of these $100,000-plus beauties has your heart pounding. But watching the nattily dressed salesman disappear into the back office, ostensibly to see if his boss will accept your bid, sets your teeth on edge. An alluring alternative, if you’re a fan of European cars, is a factory-delivery program offered by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo, and Porsche. These auto makers let you combine a new-car purchase with a jaunt around the Old World.
