In the essay, presented further I have tried to analyse the origins of the cult that emerged around a particular category of consumer products, namely the motorcar. I have attempted to follow the development of the cult throughout the history of the automobile industry, focusing on the relations between economical and political changes in the western world, and forms of manifestation of the automobile cult. After the historical review, the analysis of social roles and implications of the motor-cult are provided, alongside with a short summary of the development of the cult in the conditions of modern Latvia.
Although the principles that underlie the cult are substantially similar, irrespective of geography of its application, historically there may be distinguished two varieties of the movement, namely the American and the European ones, the main difference between them being that of form and mythologies produced. All later versions of the cult that appeared in various countries of the world (also in Latvia) used the notions and were based on the same social and psychological concepts and phenomena that initiated the emerging of the two primary forms. Therefore, the essay does not provide detailed investigations of any variants of the cult (with the exception of the summary of the cult situation in Latvia already mentioned).
It is also important to note that the cult of automobile is the phenomenon, present exclusively in the countries with political systems, based on the principles of democracy and free market economy, because its main function is to provide economical means of controlling populace, and, for this reason, it finds no application in dictatorial political systems.…
