Driving to Detroit: An Automotive Odyssey Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Driving to Detroit: An Automotive Odyssey Book

With vigor and purpose, British-born Lesley Hazleton hits the American road as "a rite of passage," journeying cross-country from her home in Seattle to the Detroit auto show. Along the way, she visits the speed runs on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, rumbles across the Sierras on the Rubicon Trail, takes her turn on the Saturn assembly line, and discovers the place where James Dean died in his Porsche. Through her journey, "a kind of Automotive geography of America," the allure of the automobile emerges--how it is entwined with the country and, importantly, her life. Hazleton is transfixed by the essence of the road and its machine, and her ability to place readers beside her in the passenger seat is provocative. When her father dies in faraway England, we become her confidant as she turns to contemplate her own grief and loss. "Journeys have a way of creating their own momentum," she writes. And although these departures from the strictly automotive theme may seem at first a distraction, they are very much a part of the larger journey of self-discovery that the American road has often held for many who have traveled and written about it. The insights she brings to characters, scenes, and sketches elsewhere become all the more meaningful. We see that, indeed, this romantic machine, the automobile, has a darker side. Just three hours from returning home, there is a wonderfully distracting radio program, an icy road, a sudden skid... Hazleton's journey dares to veer from the well-platted grid of first intentions into the back roads of the soul. A journey well worth taking. --Byron RicksRead More

from£24.63 | RRP: £17.32
* Excludes Voucher Code Discount Also available Used from £14.07
  • Product Description

    Leaving her home in Seattle in midsummer to drive "the long way round" to the Detroit auto show, Lesley Hazleton embarks on a five-month journey to visit the holy places for cars -- where they are raced, displayed, crashed, tested, and made -- as she seeks to understand our deep fascination with automobiles. Her quest takes her on a road trip that teaches her not only about cars and the peculiar passions of car lovers but also about herself.

    A committed environmentalist in thrall to the internal combustion engine, Hazleton explores her own worship of speed during assaults on the landspeed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats; negotiates the famed off-road Rubicon Trail across the Sierras; finds the exact spot where James Dean died in his Porsche Spyder; and attends a crash conference in Albuquerque, where her discovery that "when metal and flesh collide, metal always wins" sheds light on our erotic fascination with the automobile. She crushes cars in a Houston junkyard; works the nightshift at the Saturn plant in Tennessee; and in Detroit, turns away from the glitz and gleam of new metal to watch what happens when a car is driven into a million pounds of concrete. Along the way she corresponds with a class of eight-year-olds, befriends a priest who fixes his parishioners' cars, and encounters people and places where cars are created, worshiped, celebrated, and even feared. Throughout her journey, Hazleton's ability to make us see and smell and hear what is unique about each place she visits keeps us riveted, eager to move on with her to the next town on the map.

    Halfway through this extraordinary adventure, Hazleton's father, the man who taught her to drive, dies suddenly, and her trip becomes a journey of grief and memory, a deeply personal odyssey that after thirteen thousand miles almost costs her her own life on an ice-bound highway. What begins as a romance takes her deep into the heartland of obsession, evolving into a meditation on life and death as she delves into the soul of a nation and its machine.

  • 0684839873
  • 9780684839875
  • Lesley Hazleton
  • 1 November 1998
  • Free Press
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 320
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. If you click through any of the links below and make a purchase we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). Click here to learn more.

Would you like your name to appear with the review?

We will post your book review within a day or so as long as it meets our guidelines and terms and conditions. All reviews submitted become the licensed property of www.find-book.co.uk as written in our terms and conditions. None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.

All form fields are required.