Closing the body : car technology, acoustics and driving experience in the 1920s

The closed body was an expression of the civilizing of the car in the interwar period (Mom, Schot, Staal 2009). The change from adventure machine to the utilitarian car made the closing of the body a prerequisite: only if the driver and the passengers were reliably protected against all weather and road conditions, the everyday use of the economical machine could take off. The closing of the body raised new problems for automotive engineers: airflow and body noise needed to be kept under control. As a technical paradox the closed body was solution and source of these problems. The silencing of the body coincided with the discourse about noise as a sign of inefficiency. And the popularization of this discourse urged the modern motorists to demand a noiseless cars. Thus the silent car became a status symbol during the 1920’s. The closed body protected the driver not only against different physical conditions but also against the social conditions of the time. With Georg Simmel (2006: 11), one can say that the automobile was a technical protecting organ (Schutzorgan) for the new urban citizen. In short, distancing from other people and social distinction by the means of the noiseless car went hand in hand (Wetterauer 2007). As early as the 1930’s, the car became a privatized and intimate space of sonic reception. Whereas the silencing of the car was a presupposition of its sonic aesthetisation, only just the use of the radio transformed the capsule of the closed body into a sonic cocoon: because car-cocooning is not only about (social) isolation but also about (sonic) control