I consider it an honor to have been chosen to lead the Society of Automotive Historians over the next two years. The SAH is a unique organization, combining as it does independent historians, university professors, and auto enthusiasts. It is a pleasure to follow Joe Freeman, who during his tenure as President fostered new initiatives in membership, encouraged the creation of additional chapters, and successfully lobbied for greater recognition of the Society by and within the academic community. In partnership with the Board of Directors, the Officers, and you - the all-important members of the Society, I look forward to further enhancing the benefits and satisfactions that come from sharing our join interest in matters automotive.

Having said that, I have a few admissions to make. The oldest car I own was built in 2001. I would have difficulty differentiating one historic marque from another, let alone determining its year of manufacture. If I owned an antique car and needed a part for it, I think I would rather shop for it on Ebay rather than walking the Hershey fields in October, especially when it is raining. Why then did I join the SAH in the first place, participate in a number of Society sponsored events, and become active enough to be considered for office in this organization?

The answer is quite simple. I am fascinated by the collective impact of motorized vehicles on human behavior, with their influence on how we lead our individual lives, structure our local communities, and act as nations. The automobile was arguably the greatest technological artifact of the twentieth century, it has a near monopoly of the passenger land transportation in the United States, and, judging from recent reports, China--that proverbial "sleeping giant" - has awoken to find itself seated behind an automotive steering wheel.

We know a great deal about the automotive industry and the personalities behind it. Most of the significant marques of the world have been the object of at least one book-length study, and many have had multiple volumes written about them. However, when it comes to investigating the social and cultural impact of motorized vehicles on our daily existence, how motorized transportation transformed the very institutions, activities, and services that define our lives, there is a relative paucity of information. The extent to which the automobile changed family relationships, altered the functioning of towns and cities, affected the nature and accessibility of leisure activities, and impacted on how medical care is (or is not) delivered are just some of the topics that have barely been touched. We know even less regarding the influence of motorization on religion, education, and minority populations, and need to further analyze the automobile's symbolic use in literature and film.

What is responsible for this state of affairs? The answer may lie in the very pervasiveness of the automobile itself. The car is such an integral part of our daily lives that its socio-cultural impact may be deemed unworthy of serious study. Many assume that we know everything that needs to be known about how the automobile has influenced our behavior. We hardly give a second thought to it, except when it refuses to run or needs a repair. The car has become an appliance, much like the refrigerator, the clothes washer, and the power lawn mower. Whatever social and cultural changes it/they wrought are considered to have happened in the distant past, and we think of them only when we need to find an alternate means to provide the function they perform for us.

Even university professors, on whom we might think we could count for such studies, have failed us in this regard. While a few have published scholarly works on the automobile and socio-cultural change, they rarely publish more than one book in the area and then move on to study something else. Thus, the author of the first scholarly work on automobiles and the development of autocamps, tourist cabins, and motels in the United States, published back in 1979, never pursued the subject further. Similarly, the author of the first serious study of the impact of motorization on women, published in 1991, went on to explore issues of gender in a broader transportation framework. It is almost as if once the topic has been subjected to book-length analysis, it is viewed as "covered" and further research is viewed as unnecessary. This is very curious given the fondness of academic historians to write multiple books on the same subject, each with a different historical interpretation of the events described.

While I believe the relative lack of attention to the social and culture dimensions of motorization is regrettable, it does present an opportunity for our organization to become proactive, to help support a neglected aspect of automotive history. If you know of people who have an interest in how automobiles and/or commercial vehicles have impacted our lives, I would ask that you reach out to them and explain the professional benefits and personal satisfactions that come from membership in the SAH. I hope by the time that I leave the SAH Presidency in 2007 that we will have permanently crossed the 1,000-member threshold and be on our way to 1,200 or more. Broadening the prospective membership base is one way to achieve that goal.

- Mike Berger, SAH President