Your thoughts on the WWII generation remind me of my treatment of it in my book on limousines [were I able, I'd raise it on my website & avoid the space here, but my webmaster (Mom) is still in Maine, and with her the computer that has all my junk on it...]. From a general review of the meaning of the limousine in culture & the automotive age, & from the section:
"Learning to Drive: the 1950's"I might have framed it by de Tocqueville and thereby better understood it; still, I think, it was on.Following the war, private chauffeurs and limousines were for the remnants of a different world. In Britain the Labour Party tossed out Churchill and focused national attention on the welfare state. One post-War Labour Party envoy to New York felt the British Mission's Rolls-Royce was too "patrician." The Mission's long-standing and impeccable chauffeur, George Tambone, in a sublime backhanded reply dissuaded the man of the Rolls-Royce's expendability. Another type of car "might be suitable for you, sir," Tambone explained, "but we often carry Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries in this car. For them, nothing else would be appropriate."
In the United States the ascendency of the middle class led to a consumer culture that favored self-autonomy and instant gratification over social convention. The aristocracy was out and with it the chauffeur. To the hard working, independent businessman of the age, a limousine, much less a Cadillac sedan, meant that customers would think they're being ripped off. This was ascendency of the Buick, a solid car, solidly in the middle of the GM hierarchy and the American middle class.
The ways of outward extravagance disappeared, like the rides in the park of an earlier day. The chauffeur was killed in Italy, and the Packard now had power assisted brakes and automatic transmission. Still, there were enough hold-outs to the old school and new wealth seeking to join it to continue the traditions of privately chauffeured cars and fuel the ascendency of Rolls-Royce, which became the prestigious make of the post-War world. Albeit quieter (and literally so), extravagance lived on magnificently in the back of a Phantom V. Of American limousines, it was the Cadillac.
1920's extravagance gave way to the self-reliance and self-indulgence of the Fifties. Cars were to be powered by nuclear reactors. Man was master of all he surveyed, including the drivers seat. Triumphant armies returned home, went back to school, and started families. Victorious, self-sufficient, and the equal to any man, the stage was finally set for real equality (an as yet painful journey). Social distinction gave way to merit, and the new meritocracy had no use for chauffeurs.
There was much confusion, though, for things hadn't sorted out. The wartime sabbatical from production left a tremendous gap between the new and the old, manifestly seen by the 1942 and 1946 models that followed one another sequentially. Packard had a novel solution to the problem. The company took its entire pre-War tooling and shipped it off to Moscow, which accounts for the oddly recognizable Zim limousines in which Stalin and Kruschvev were driven. But what was a dowager to do without the old town car? And who was to drive it? The flashy Russian emigre, Maxim Karolik, one quite used to riding in the back seat, drove a group of friends to New York on the way to a Princeton football game. One recalled that Maxim dropped them at Times Square, as "he was completely lost, because he had always been driven by a chauffeur. We caught the next train to Trenton and took a cab back to Princeton."
Ironically, that same leveling of society that placed Karolik behind the wheel marked the growth of the chauffeured, for-hire business. Started in 1921 with the purchase of a limousine concession and its six cars, J.P. Carey's Grand Central Packard Renting Corporation took the notion of luxury for hire and formal livery transportation a step further. The company would soon replace the private chauffeur, and quite literally so. Aside from providing formal limousine service to visiting dignitaries and occasional use for local New Yorkers, Carey's company hired not a few clients' chauffeurs, bought the limousines, and rented both back to the client. Carey's grandson, Paul Carey, Jr., recalls one client who resided at the Plaza hotel and ran about town in her Lincoln limousine driven by her private chauffeur, Tommy. She wanted a new limousine and a secure future for Tommy, so a deal was struck whereby Carey bought the Lincoln, hired Tommy, and provided either the Lincoln or a new Cadillac whenever she required. Carey describes how this lady would instruct the chauffeur: "Tommy, we'll use the Lincoln today..." or, "Tommy, let's use the Cadillac," just as if the car came from her own garage.
...almost all the tastes and habits which the equality of condition produces naturally lead men to commercial and industrial occupations.The last I love, for de T ends the sentence with the brilliant and highly enlightening remark,Circumscribed within the narrow space which politics leave them, rich men in democracies eagerly embark in commercial enterprise; there they can extend and employ their natural advantages; and indeed, it is even by the boldness and the magnitude of their industrial speculations that we may measure the slight esteem in which productive industry would have been held by them, if they had been born amidst an aristocracy.
A similar observation is likewise applicable to all men living in democracies, whether they be poor or rich. Those who live in the midst of democratic fluctuations have always before their eyes the image of chance; and they end by liking all undertakings in which chance plays a part. They are therefore all led to engage in commerce, not only for the sake of the profit it holds out to them, but for the love of the constant excitement occasioned by that pursuit.In no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy; it would seem that their desires contract as easily as they expand with their fortunes.
The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do..."
... this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome.Lol! And so true.