Whether made for car-crazed children or their unreformed parents, there is no shortage of four-wheeled amusements at the show, some miniaturized and others less so.
In car-crazed Southern California, the Cadillac Escalade, an S.U.V. driven by celebrities like Whitney Houston, is the car of the moment.
"I'd say, 'Dad, Dad, that's a Jowett Jupiter.' He'd say, 'What?', and I'd say, 'That's the name of the car, Dad, a Jowett Jupiter.'" Realizing his son was car-crazed, Mr. Johnson went to an automotive scrapyard and bought an old steering wheel, attached it to a stick, and mounted it on young Brian's headboard.
Writing at the peak of America's reinvention of itself as a car-crazed nation, and when the interstate highway system was being built, he tried to explain that the epidemic of traffic accidents had become "one of the nation's foremost public-health problems," the injuries reaching as many as five million a year.
The Vette wasn't crucial, the sales numbers were tiny, and conquering the sports-car world was less vital an element in the Chevrolet plan for world domination than, say, the annual All-American Soap Box Derby, contrived to endear Chevy to the young generation of car-crazed boys, win their loyalty, and maybe breed Chevy men for life.
Today's KL has more in common with Shanghai than the tropical Shangri-la tourists may hope for, a car-crazed sprawling Los Angeles with hints of Dubai.
Back in the '50s, this was the center of the car-crazed universe.
"The chutzpah was doing it in car-crazed L.A.," he says.
Mad Max, the original, was a leading film in the Australian New Wave movement, its makers consciously adding art and complexity to a movie about car chases and crazed bikers.
Crowds flock around the car like crazed Beatles fans as Mario and Mike drive through the narrow streets of the historic centre during the Madonna di Piedigrotta parade, a September festival which has been raging off and on since the 16th century.
