The Steam Car: The Little Car that Could

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This is a Modest Proposal. Some people will think it's anything BUT modest, but people scare easily these days.

Take a point; our atmosphere smells like Hell, literally. Any minute we may all choke to death. And that isn't a fantasy; it's a fact, attested to by sober scientists. Add a codicil; under no circumstances will Americans give up their cars and roads, and return to rail travel . . . and don't mention the sky, for good and sufficient reasons. They will not surrender their cars, ever; they'll die first. And so will the remaining pedestrians.

Take another point; the steam automobile. For thirty years, steam cars ran faster, more cheaply, and more safely than gas-fueled cars. And they did NOT emit poison fumes, not ever. Then, they vanished, for reasons which had absolutely nothing to do with engineering, ecological good, or cost. They were outsold, by vast amounts of money poured into advertising, by good old American salesmanship, which always works hardest when selling an inferior product. The gas car won. Now, look, Wow.

Over the last few years repeated attempts have been made to revive steam cars as a commercially sold vehicle; every such attempt has suddenly, and often rather mysteriously, stopped, just short of actual production. Now, with the current yells of pain from gassed citizens, you keep hearing of a steam car . . . next year, maybe. But somehow not today.

Lear, who made huge promises, invested millions in development, and was, according to publicity, ready to actually produce a steam car, suddenly, and with no good reason, stopped dead in his tracks. Again, I won't speculate about possible reasons; do your own paranoia trip.

Third point. Groups and communes, popping up here and there, looking for economically feasible ways to make it. Well, not all of us are farmers.

All right. A commune; ten, twenty, or more people, a farmhouse, and a great big barn, and maybe none of them are farmers. Machine tools; a good big lathe, a milling machine, some welding equipment, sheet metal tools, and access to one of those great mines of spare parts, the American auto junkyard.

All of these people are working, together; not the way men work on a Detroit auto line, but each at the craft he does best. In that big barn . . . building steam cars, one at a time, as cars were once built till the assembly line was invented. The frames and parts may be rebuilt junked gas cars, at least at first. The engine and boiler? Right now, anyone who wants can buy a steam power plant for an automobile, which he can bolt right into a standard American car, lobotomized of its poison-gas guts; the price, last I heard, ran around $1200 for the works. Maybe our communards buy these engines, and maybe, after a while, they buy merely rough castings, boiler tube and other raw parts.

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