Fuzzy Dice Decor: The Car Interior As Living Room
LEAD: ERIN MURPHY SCHNEEWEISS keeps two tiny teddy bears on the dashboard of her sporty white car: one wears a white dress with a veil; the other, a dinner jacket and top hat. 'Everyone sees them,' said Mrs. Schneeweiss, who lives in Midland Park, N.J., and drives a 1986 Pontiac Fiero. 'Everyone asks if I'm married, everyone says congratulations, and they bring back memories every time I look at them.
ERIN MURPHY SCHNEEWEISS keeps two tiny teddy bears on the dashboard of her sporty white car: one wears a white dress with a veil; the other, a dinner jacket and top hat. 'Everyone sees them,' said Mrs. Schneeweiss, who lives in Midland Park, N.J., and drives a 1986 Pontiac Fiero. 'Everyone asks if I'm married, everyone says congratulations, and they bring back memories every time I look at them. They're a very personal thing.'
If you are what you drive, as some car-conscious consumers maintain, then personalizing the passenger compartment can be as time-consuming and emotionally demanding as choosing between Chippendale and Louis XV. It certainly is as lucrative: automobile accessories have become a billion-dollar business. But in the tiny space of a car, a space already defined by fake wood on the dashboard and carpet made of fibers not found in nature, the result is usually more kitsch than elegance: fuzzy dice dangle from rear-view mirrors, and stuffed cats creep in on suction-cup feet.
For millions of drivers, these items add just the right touch by turning one interior space into a microcosm of another. 'We identify so closely with our automobiles that it makes sense to think of them as extensions of the home,' two British psychologists, Peter Marsh and Peter Collett, wrote in 'Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car' (Faber & Faber, 1987).
Ever since the early auto makers put tops on their motorized buggies, the car has been a kind of portable room, with seats as plush as an easy chair, a windshield as big as a picture window and a dashboard that Dr. Michael Marsden maintains is 'a kind of mantelpiece on which we display objects of affection.'
To Dr. Marsden, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, the rear-view mirror serves as the automotive equivalent of the peg above the mantelpiece, from which Colonial families hung muskets or ancestral portraits.
Like what's hung on the walls of a home, the items that decorate a car, from decals in the windows to stuffed animals on the back seat, tell much about the likes and dislikes of the owner. 'Look at what you're proclaiming,' Dr. Marsden said. ' 'I went to this university; I like this cartoon character.' You are projecting yourself to the outside world. It's a remarkable kind of thing. People are using their automobiles as a giant billboard for their own particular tastes and their own particular values.'
Dangling from the rear-view mirror of Marika Guyton's Ford EXP is a little plastic hamburger in a bun; a Garfield, the comic-strip cat; a ballpoint pen, and a deodorizer. 'I like stuffed animals and hamburgers,' she said, 'and I like my car to smell nice.'
As in home furnishings, there are trends in automotive accessories. Particularly popular this year are stuffed animals anchored to windows, a marketing bonanza for the obese and obstreperous Garfield, poised to escape from thousands of cars at the sight of Odie, his canine nemesis.
One motorist, Clara Pugh, has a veritable zoo in her car: lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and even Minnie Mouse. 'It's a home away from home,' said Ms. Pugh, who helps manage a K Mart store in Paramus, N.J. 'I had stuffed animals in my bedroom, so having them in the car is a natural.'
Stuffed animals also appeal to drivers who love pets but wouldn't let them in their living rooms and know better than to leave live animals in closed cars.
One of last year's biggest sellers, yellow plastic signs, are seen less often this year. Whether this means that there are fewer 'babies on board' or 'mothers-in-law in trunk' is unclear. 'I want a sign that says, 'Yellow sign in trunk,' ' said one woman from New Jersey who declined to identify herself. 'I got tired of the sign fad real fast.' Now, she keeps a teddy bear on the dashboard.
But some motorists are not concerned with trendy items. Hanging from the rear-view mirror of Linda Brown's red 1967 Camaro is a white foxtail, the tassle from her graduation at Passaic Valley High School last June and a small bear. On the dashboard are Rodney, a bulldog she acquired at a Burger King, and stickers for her favorite heavy-metal bands - Anthrax, the Misfits and Fiendz.
'It's me,' said Ms. Brown, who works in a photo-finishing store in Clifton, N.J. 'Everyone sees me in the car and sees all the stuff, and they say, 'Yeah, that's her.' ' The car lacks only one thing. 'I've been looking for leopard seat covers for a year,' she said. When asked why leopard, she pulled out her leopard makeup case and said she also treasured her leopard sneakers.
Dr. Marsden, the Bowling Green professor, argues that animal mascots in cars are a throwback to the foxtails that drivers once hung from their radio antennas. After World War II, Dr. Marsden said, dashboards became larger and more shelflike, and what he calls 'the personal icons' came in from the cold, the rain and the dust.
This marked the beginning of the statue era and the heyday of religious objects. Dr. Marsden said one of his graduate school classmates tied a Christian statue and a voodoo doll to his rear-view mirror. 'I asked why both,' Dr. Marsden recalled. 'The answer was, 'When one quits, the other takes over.' '
One woman who lives in northern New Jersey said she would never drive without her religious medals, which were blessed by the Pope. 'No accidents,' she said when asked about them. 'They're a reminder to me to drive carefully.'
Not all statues and medals that bedeck cars are religious, of course. Lisa Livi, a clerk from Paterson, N.J., has a lucky bulldog in her Z-28 Camaro. 'If I take him out, I just know I'll get in an accident,' she said.
Americans' desire for personal icons has turned the automotive accessories business into a major industry that sells all the comforts of home. Executives at J. C. Whitney in Chicago, for example, claim that with 65,000 accessories in stock, it is one of the world's largest retailers of its kind. Among its catalogue offerings is a completely portable satellite dish and television receiver for $539.96.
Many customers prefer function over form: a plastic holder for sunglasses costs $3.59. But Whitney also stocks eight-ball gearshift knobs ($2.60) and large foot-shaped accelerators ($5.39), just the thing for Jolly Green Giants who want to put their pedals to the metal.
'People who buy these things want to make the car their own,' Dr. Marsden said. 'It's a way of personalizing technology and integrating it into your life. That object is no longer sitting out there, distant from you, if you personalize it as your machine with your stamp on it. That says you feel quite at home.'
The personality being projected, Dr. Marsden said, is generally a driver's image of himself or herself, not necessarily the truth. 'How else do you explain macho symbols and carnival objects?' he said.
It has always been possible to send messages on bumper stickers, but now it's possible to personalize those, too, using changeable stick-on letters and a frame that can be attached to the rear window. And then there are other approaches. Whitney, for example, sells a license-plate frame surrounded by lights for $17.96.
Frank Pepe, a Manhattan printer, preferred lights by themselves, so he bought a T-shaped light bar for the package shelf of his 1979 Lincoln Continental coupe. 'Hit the brakes, and it glitters,' he said. 'It gets people's attention.'