Our first video, from the YouTube channel America Revisited (2026), argues that the country’s car culture is dying off with the Baby Boomers. The video goes on to suggest that car culture was about “freedom in a specific form affordable to a specific people in a specific moment that history handed to one generation and then quietly closed the door.”
The video points to a handful of factors that spurred the end of car culture. They range from the escalating costs of car ownership to the emergence of a “digital world that offers identity, community and status through a phone screen rather than a vehicle in a driveway.” The video concludes that “the psychological need that the car once fulfilled didn’t disappear — it just found a new address.”
Another factor in the decline of car culture is that younger generations have been “told since childhood that the internal-combustion engine is a threat to the planet’s future. Loving a loud V8 unironically now requires consciously ignoring a conversation that’s impossible to avoid.” That doesn’t make passion for cars “impossible but it adds friction that didn’t simply exist before.”
The video acknowledges that one can point to examples of car culture still being popular with young people, such as with off-roading. However, “none of those subcultures have the scale, the mainstream dominance or the economic economic infrastructure that Boomer car culture had at its peak.”
What do the super rich drive in Monaco?
The YouTube channel Monaco Luxurious (2026) apparently does nothing more than post videos of super-rich people getting in and out of their cars in the French Riviera micro-state of Monaco. I find these videos strangely fascinating.
Part of what’s curious is how so many of the people in these videos appear to be obsessed with how they look to others. It’s all about presentation — the clothes, the facelift, the car. One can get the impression that a goodly proportion of the folks who drive up in a Ferrari don’t care about the car’s roadworthiness. They just want to be seen in something ultra expensive and exotic.
This helps explain why the design of high-priced cars has gotten so overamped in recent years. It’s not about beauty or mechanical brilliance — it’s about spectacle. My car stands out more than your car.
In other words, the whole point of driving an exotic car is to engage in what sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1994) referred to as “conspicuous consumption.” Michael Mayerfield Bell noted that this can become a competition whereby “one tries to keep up with the Joneses, the Joneses are trying to keep up with the neighbor on the other side, and up the line to Liberace, the Rockefellers. . . and Bill Gates” (2004, 47).
What I find ironic is that these folks are so wealthy they could do pretty much anything with their life. Yet they instead fixate on how they look in comparison to other rich people. In a very real sense they have traded authenticity for conformity.
Reconsidering the 1957 Nash Ambassador
I recently clicked into a YouTube video of a 1957 Nash Ambassador that was for sale, so now my feed is regularly bestowed with more, more, more 1957 Nashes. In a way that’s irritating, but I have to admit that this car is starting to grow on me.
For one thing, this is easily the best looking of the 1952-57 big Nashes. The front-end styling was now relatively normal, with newly outboard dual headlights and fully open wheel cutouts. That allowed the front tread to be increased a meaningful 2.5 inches. According to an American Motors promotional film for dealers, the new Nash had a tighter turning circle than previous models that sported more enclosed front wheels (Osborn Tramain, 2024).
This was Nash’s last year. Production dropped to just over 10,000 units. That was a big fall from 1952, when more than 91,000 big Nashes left the factory.
Also see ‘How far should AMC have gone to save the Hudson, Nash and Rambler brands?’
The overriding problem with the Nash may have been that it had the oldest body in the full-sized, premium-priced field. That was at a time when dramatically lower, longer, wider designs were sweeping the industry. The Nash was the antithesis of the sleek new Chrysler or the boxier but space-aged Mercury.
The Nash was arguably a better family car in many ways. It had a taller body that didn’t require contortions to squeeze yourself under a fashionably low roofline. The AMC also had useful innovations such as unit-body construction, which meant that it didn’t suffer from the squeaks and rattles of body-on-frame cars, and arguably the most advanced air-conditioning in a U.S. car. Beyond all that, the car’s basic design was now its sixth year, so it wasn’t plagued by the quality glitches of many “all new” Big Three offerings.
So while the Nash may have looked old hat by 1957, it was arguably a particularly good value. Perhaps if Nash marketing had done a better job of articulating the car”s advantages it might have sold better. Or perhaps it was way ahead of its time.
NOTES:
Production figures and specifications are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006) and Gunnell (2002).
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RE:SOURCES
- America Revisited; 2026. “You Understand Why Car Culture Died With the Baby Boomers.” Posted May 15 on YouTube.
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Bell, Michael Mayerfeld. 2004. An invitation to environmental sociology. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Monaco Luxurious; 2026. “Monaco Ladies Best Supercar Arrivals and Billionaire Luxury Lifestyle.” Posted May 7 on YouTube.
- Osborn Tramain; 2024. “1957 Nash Ambassador New Car Sales Demo Slide Show.” Posted on Dec. 17 on YouTube.
- Veblen, Thorstein. 1994. The theory of the leisure class. New York: Dover Publications Inc.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcarbrochures.org: Nash Ambassador (1957)
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