October 13, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, going Ga-Ga for automobiles happened to Miles Collier as to so many - in an instant. Now Miles runs the world's best car museum, and wrote The Archaeological Automobile, a book about American material culture, the material remnants we leave behind as we travel through time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story from one of the top car collectors in the world.
Miles Collier was the founder of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida,
which has been named America's best car museum by wrote
in Track magazine. And today we hear from Miles about
his own story with cars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The only thing I will say about a night racing
career is that years later I was accosted by a
representative of the ASPCA, which is the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Automobiles, and they suggested that
I probably shouldn't be driving anymore. It's cruelty and automobiles.
You don't know the SPCA. They lurk around racetracks and
(01:02):
they find you doing mean things to your car. They say,
stop that, son, you ought to be on the beach.
I'm totally incompletely facetious, the point being that I am
not the embodiment of Tatsio Nuvalari, not that I was terrible.
I wasn't terrible, but I just drifted away from it.
My high point was I was awarded the first SVR
(01:26):
A Driver of the Year. Even the blind Pig eventually
finds the corn. The thing about cars is that they
have the unique property of reaching out and grabbing the
susceptible person by the throat the point being a sociology
(01:48):
researcher whose materials I read basically said cars pick the
people that are interested in them, not the other way around.
And that's not necessarily true of golf or fly fishing,
or flying model airplanes or any of these other things.
Cars have this property where analogously we think of wind
(02:09):
in the windows. Remember how mister Toad the first time
he saw a car and all of a sudden his
eyes started rotating in his head, and is all he
could say was poop, poop or whatever it was, and
he was just completely blown away by the automobile. Well,
that is literally how automobiles attract their following. So what
(02:29):
was my Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus event? Well,
is all I can say is my dad was a
racer back in the day. Sadly he died in nineteen
fifty four, But I remember some years after that, when
my family had moved back to New York City where
I was going to school. One weekend or something, I
(02:52):
came across a box full of old road and track magazines,
and I pulled him out and I started flipping through them,
and I can recall even now there's one article on
a Jowat Jupiter. Now there's a terrifying confection. A Jowat
Jupiter is a particularly nasty English confection with a four
(03:13):
cylinder water cooled horizontally opposed front engine. And the Jowat
mark was prevalent in its last gas were prevalent in
the UK in the nineteen fifties, and their high performance
sportscar version was the Jowat Jupiter. And some small voice
in the back of my head said, now it's time
(03:33):
to get interested in cars. Never looked back so long
roundabout way of saying that cars reached out and grabbed me.
They did it through the medium of magazines. Well, I
think the way people get involved in cars as idiosyncratic.
It depends on the person. And as a former girlfriend
(03:56):
of mine said, Myles, you can over intellectualize anything that
was a relation that was not going anywhere. I can
over intellectualize anything. So I got interested in cars first
of all because of their obvious glamour, romance, attractiveness, all
the things that everybody loves about cars, and then the
(04:18):
more interesting thing to me was the context and the connections.
So context and connections which I have been able to
push to the extent of what you see today, where
we have one of the world's great library collections and
one of the world's great car collections, and all kinds
of things that combine together allow us to really understand
(04:40):
the automobile as a human and social and cultural phenomenon,
which is where I'm particularly interested, and that's why I
have ended up writing a book called The Archaeological Automobile.
But the point is, the Archaeological Autobile is essentially about
thinking about the automobile as material culture. Material culture are
(05:04):
the things that mankind produces in ordinary life, in ordinary use,
and material culture varies around the world as a function
of the culture from which it comes, and so something
from Japan is going to be different from something from
Germany or something from South America. But it is basically
(05:27):
the material remnants that we leave behind as our species
travels through time. The automobile is completely underrepresented in the Academy.
It is completely underrepresented among our normal cultural institutions, for
reasons that absolutely no one I've been able to find
can articulate. The automobile is just something that nobody wants
(05:50):
to talk about. You know, I did an enormous amount
of reading for my book, and the gist of academic
commentators who comment about the autobile in they're few and
far between, is that we find it inexplicable. Normally, the
amount of published materials roughly is congruent with the importance
(06:13):
of the thing being written about. This is not true
of the automobile is enormously important, and nobody writes about it.
In fact, it's generally viewed as one of those subjects.
It's a third rail of the academy. Okay, you write
about automobiles, you're immediately suspect. I guess I would say
(06:34):
the problem with the automobile is it's way too stimulating.
It's way too interesting, it's way too charming, it's way
too engaging, and therefore it can't be serious. So, you know,
we can talk about the evolving morphology of Barbie Dolls
over time and the self perception of women as a
sociological paper, but we cannot talk about the autobile in
(06:59):
any way, means or form. And now you know, it's
changing a little, and there are some academicians out there.
I mentioned Dale Dannifer, who did sociologic research on how
to car enthusiasts become car enthusiasts. There are people, you know,
academicians who are writing about the influence of the automobile
on society in various ways, but generally the focus is
(07:19):
on the automobile is a social change agent because that
lets you deal with the automobile in the abstract. It's
a social change agent. We don't need to get into
it anymore. Okay, so now we can talk about society
and how society changes with this amorphous, undefined thing, autombile,
social change agent. No picture of the autombile is created,
(07:42):
There are no analysis of the autombile exists. We just
talk about it. It's influence, so that seems to be
relatively safe. If you start talking about the autobil is
material culture, boy, or you in trouble because that's where
you know everything suspect happens. So naturally, my books about
the automobile is material culture, and it's a hugely important
(08:02):
piece of our material culture. The thing we need to
remember about the automobile and much other material culture is
the same way is that it has a function, has
a nominal function, and the automobile's nominal function is personal
mobility and mobility of goods. But it has other functions
that are implicit, and one of them is social signaling.
(08:26):
Human beings have evolved over millions of years to be
sensitive to other human beings across vectors of power, status,
and wealth. People are social animals. You stick them all
in the room, they immediately want to know what's the
pecking order here, and we have a zillion signaling modes
(08:51):
to do that so that you know it. It becomes
a you know, a natural and easy things to do,
and is everything from fashion. Okay, you can have a
you know, one hundred and fifty dollars suit from Walmart,
or you can have you know, totally customed soilp blend
blah blah blah, and you can tell the difference. So
(09:11):
you know, it's clothes, it's houses, it's furnishings, it's you know,
all of those kinds of things. And one of the
most effective has always been transportation. So the man on
the horse was always in a superior position to you know,
all the peasants that were standing around, pulling on their
forelocks and making nice noises to them the glittering carriage
(09:35):
with a perfectly matched pair and a coachman and a footman.
You know, pretty much let everybody know where you stood.
The automobile did the same thing, and it doesn't to
the same thing today. Right you see some beat up
Toyota high Lucks with a bunch of garden equipment in
the bed of the thing. It's like, oh, okay, I
(09:55):
kind of know what the story is there and is
next to, you know, some portion nine to eighteen hypercar, right, Like, okay,
If that's not social signaling, I don't know what is.
I mean, you know, people say, oh, no, that's just
that's a terrible thing. I got news for you. I
don't care it's terrible or not terrible. We have evolved
that way genetically. We are sensitive to status and power
(10:20):
and wealth because evidently it worked over tens of thousands
of years. So whether it should be or it could now,
forget that. I mean, that's that's a mugs game to play.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And you've been listening to Miles Collie or the founder
of America's best car museum, the REVS Institute. The automobile.
It's story, it's cultural as an artifact and as a
fact of life here on our American story.
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story from one of the top car collectors in the world.
Miles Collier was the founder of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida,
which has been named America's best car museum by wrote
in Track magazine. And today we hear from Miles about
his own story with cars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The only thing I will say about a night racing
career is that years later I was accosted by a
representative of the ASPCA, which is the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Automobiles, and they suggested that
I probably shouldn't be driving anymore. It's cruelty and automobiles.
You don't know the SPCA. They lurk around racetracks and
(01:02):
they find you doing mean things to your car. They say,
stop that, son, you ought to be on the beach.
I'm totally incompletely facetious, the point being that I am
not the embodiment of Tatsio Nuvalari, not that I was terrible.
I wasn't terrible, but I just drifted away from it.
My high point was I was awarded the first SVR
(01:26):
A Driver of the Year. Even the blind Pig eventually
finds the corn. The thing about cars is that they
have the unique property of reaching out and grabbing the
susceptible person by the throat the point being a sociology
(01:48):
researcher whose materials I read basically said cars pick the
people that are interested in them, not the other way around.
And that's not necessarily true of golf or fly fishing,
or flying model airplanes or any of these other things.
Cars have this property where analogously we think of wind
(02:09):
in the windows. Remember how mister Toad the first time
he saw a car and all of a sudden his
eyes started rotating in his head, and is all he
could say was poop, poop or whatever it was, and
he was just completely blown away by the automobile. Well,
that is literally how automobiles attract their following. So what
(02:29):
was my Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus event? Well,
is all I can say is my dad was a
racer back in the day. Sadly he died in nineteen
fifty four, But I remember some years after that, when
my family had moved back to New York City where
I was going to school. One weekend or something, I
(02:52):
came across a box full of old road and track magazines,
and I pulled him out and I started flipping through them,
and I can recall even now there's one article on
a Jowat Jupiter. Now there's a terrifying confection. A Jowat
Jupiter is a particularly nasty English confection with a four
(03:13):
cylinder water cooled horizontally opposed front engine. And the Jowat
mark was prevalent in its last gas were prevalent in
the UK in the nineteen fifties, and their high performance
sportscar version was the Jowat Jupiter. And some small voice
in the back of my head said, now it's time
(03:33):
to get interested in cars. Never looked back so long
roundabout way of saying that cars reached out and grabbed me.
They did it through the medium of magazines. Well, I
think the way people get involved in cars as idiosyncratic.
It depends on the person. And as a former girlfriend
(03:56):
of mine said, Myles, you can over intellectualize anything that
was a relation that was not going anywhere. I can
over intellectualize anything. So I got interested in cars first
of all because of their obvious glamour, romance, attractiveness, all
the things that everybody loves about cars, and then the
(04:18):
more interesting thing to me was the context and the connections.
So context and connections which I have been able to
push to the extent of what you see today, where
we have one of the world's great library collections and
one of the world's great car collections, and all kinds
of things that combine together allow us to really understand
(04:40):
the automobile as a human and social and cultural phenomenon,
which is where I'm particularly interested, and that's why I
have ended up writing a book called The Archaeological Automobile.
But the point is, the Archaeological Autobile is essentially about
thinking about the automobile as material culture. Material culture are
(05:04):
the things that mankind produces in ordinary life, in ordinary use,
and material culture varies around the world as a function
of the culture from which it comes, and so something
from Japan is going to be different from something from
Germany or something from South America. But it is basically
(05:27):
the material remnants that we leave behind as our species
travels through time. The automobile is completely underrepresented in the Academy.
It is completely underrepresented among our normal cultural institutions, for
reasons that absolutely no one I've been able to find
can articulate. The automobile is just something that nobody wants
(05:50):
to talk about. You know, I did an enormous amount
of reading for my book, and the gist of academic
commentators who comment about the autobile in they're few and
far between, is that we find it inexplicable. Normally, the
amount of published materials roughly is congruent with the importance
(06:13):
of the thing being written about. This is not true
of the automobile is enormously important, and nobody writes about it.
In fact, it's generally viewed as one of those subjects.
It's a third rail of the academy. Okay, you write
about automobiles, you're immediately suspect. I guess I would say
(06:34):
the problem with the automobile is it's way too stimulating.
It's way too interesting, it's way too charming, it's way
too engaging, and therefore it can't be serious. So, you know,
we can talk about the evolving morphology of Barbie Dolls
over time and the self perception of women as a
sociological paper, but we cannot talk about the autobile in
(06:59):
any way, means or form. And now you know, it's
changing a little, and there are some academicians out there.
I mentioned Dale Dannifer, who did sociologic research on how
to car enthusiasts become car enthusiasts. There are people, you know,
academicians who are writing about the influence of the automobile
on society in various ways, but generally the focus is
(07:19):
on the automobile is a social change agent because that
lets you deal with the automobile in the abstract. It's
a social change agent. We don't need to get into
it anymore. Okay, so now we can talk about society
and how society changes with this amorphous, undefined thing, autombile,
social change agent. No picture of the autombile is created,
(07:42):
There are no analysis of the autombile exists. We just
talk about it. It's influence, so that seems to be
relatively safe. If you start talking about the autobil is
material culture, boy, or you in trouble because that's where
you know everything suspect happens. So naturally, my books about
the automobile is material culture, and it's a hugely important
(08:02):
piece of our material culture. The thing we need to
remember about the automobile and much other material culture is
the same way is that it has a function, has
a nominal function, and the automobile's nominal function is personal
mobility and mobility of goods. But it has other functions
that are implicit, and one of them is social signaling.
(08:26):
Human beings have evolved over millions of years to be
sensitive to other human beings across vectors of power, status,
and wealth. People are social animals. You stick them all
in the room, they immediately want to know what's the
pecking order here, and we have a zillion signaling modes
(08:51):
to do that so that you know it. It becomes
a you know, a natural and easy things to do,
and is everything from fashion. Okay, you can have a
you know, one hundred and fifty dollars suit from Walmart,
or you can have you know, totally customed soilp blend
blah blah blah, and you can tell the difference. So
(09:11):
you know, it's clothes, it's houses, it's furnishings, it's you know,
all of those kinds of things. And one of the
most effective has always been transportation. So the man on
the horse was always in a superior position to you know,
all the peasants that were standing around, pulling on their
forelocks and making nice noises to them the glittering carriage
(09:35):
with a perfectly matched pair and a coachman and a footman.
You know, pretty much let everybody know where you stood.
The automobile did the same thing, and it doesn't to
the same thing today. Right you see some beat up
Toyota high Lucks with a bunch of garden equipment in
the bed of the thing. It's like, oh, okay, I
(09:55):
kind of know what the story is there and is
next to, you know, some portion nine to eighteen hypercar, right, Like, okay,
If that's not social signaling, I don't know what is.
I mean, you know, people say, oh, no, that's just
that's a terrible thing. I got news for you. I
don't care it's terrible or not terrible. We have evolved
that way genetically. We are sensitive to status and power
(10:20):
and wealth because evidently it worked over tens of thousands
of years. So whether it should be or it could now,
forget that. I mean, that's that's a mugs game to play.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And you've been listening to Miles Collie or the founder
of America's best car museum, the REVS Institute. The automobile.
It's story, it's cultural as an artifact and as a
fact of life here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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