The automotive industry is a prime example of American capitalism at work. Standards are constantly being set higher and higher, all for the benefit of the consumer and the public at large. Four primary divisions of quality standards exist: safety standards, reliability and durability standards, environmental standards, and manufacturing standards. In the process of this report, we had the opportunity to speak with Jim Reamy, sales manager of Hawes Chrysler Plymouth Subaru, an automotive dealership in Gainesville, Florida, and with Dr. Gerald Cole, an engineer employed by the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.

Since the mid 1970s, safety has been a key issue in all aspects of the automotive business -- building the car, inspecting the car, marketing the car. "Safety is very important today, so nobody is slacking in that department," Mr. Reamy said. Safety is emphasized by the media; an example is the recent television coverage given to why child safety seats should not be placed in the front passenger seat of a car with double airbags. Examples of safety features include seat belts, airbags, shatterproof glass, redundant braking systems, antilock braking systems (which were designed not to decrease the distance required to stop the car, but to aid the driver in steering the car or swerving it away from something during the braking), child safety seats, dual impact door beams, crumple zones, dual-beated safety rims, the downward movement of the steering wheel during a head-on collision to avoid hitting the chest of the driver, and recessed door handles and rolling-window handles on the insides of car doors. It costs anywhere from $800 to $4000 for any or all of these features, depending on the make and model of the car; usually that price is hidden in the overall sticker price. Future cars may see airbags deploying in all directions, in all three dimensions: in front of you, behind you (deploying from the back of the carseat), to your sides, and above you. Mr. Reamy's employer, Hawes Chrysler Plymouth Subaru, sponsors public service announcements on television in the Gainesville area in regards to automotive safety; a member of the Florida Highway Patrol informs the public of the benefits of seat belts and the dangers of drunken driving, just to name two examples.

The overall reliability and durability of an automobile has drastically increased over the past ten years. In television commercials, we frequently hear about cars that don't need a tune-up until it has reached 100,000 miles. Mr. Reamy says that 100,000 miles is now the minimum; some cars will never need a tune-up. Most cars today have smaller engines and use less fluids than the classic gas-guzzlers that we were used to seeing as we grew up; that necessarily translates to less maintenance. The average number of miles that a new car will run today is from 100,000 to 250,000 miles.

The phrase "California emissions" refers to the highest current environmental standard in use today for cars. The air quality in Los Angeles is so terrible that the State of California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) was ordered to do something to clear the air. The California Air Resources Board (CARB), a part of Cal/EPA, created the Mobile Source Emission Branch within CARB "to maintain and distribute an accurate and defensible motor vehicle emission inventory which is as responsive as practical to the needs of the public." The branch is responsible for forecasting emissions, making inventories of emissions, and reacting to data about those emissions from cars in California. It does so by characterizing typical vehicle emissions and typical driving patterns. After several series of data collections, the branch has indirectly created the lowest level of emissions for the automotive industry. Examples of data used for these estimates are vehicle miles of travel (VMT), vehicle population, frequency of vehicle start-ups, driving patterns which are characterized by average speeds, acceleration patterns, idle frequency, and cruise patterns.

Standards of manufacturing have been in existence since Henry Ford used the assembly line to speed the production of his cars. There are two kinds of manufacturing standards: parts and assembly. Each part, or component, has a worldwide standard of quality for strength, weight, length, width, height, size, and design for function. The assembly standards are specific processes of fitting the components together in a chronological and spatial order (or, to borrow a phrase from science fiction, the timespace continuum). There are specific minimum and maximum distances in regard to the vehicle and the immediate environment; examples include a maximum distance between the bottom of a trunk or car door and the top of a curb, and a minimum distance between the top of a car or truck and the bottom of a bridge. Other standards have to do with putting the steering wheel on the right side of the car for other countries. Even more unusual are requests for thinner cars by Egypt and some European countries; their roads are not as wide as American roads, so the car must be made thinner to accommodate the pavement there.