The elusive people's car: Imagined automobility and productive practices along the "Czechoslovak Road to socialism" (1945-1968)

In Czechoslovakia the automobile was not born socialist. After February 1948 the technicians who were involved in the development of the automobile industry had to take into account, on the one hand, the well-established productive practices that were the result of the complex, multilayered industrial history of zechoslovakia and, on the other hand, the American model of mass production that at the time everyone considered the primary reference for the industry. What is more, almost fifty years of "automobility" had created high expectations among both the experts in the sector and the common people regarding how and when mass motorization would come about. Finally, In this young, industrialized Central European republic, starting from the first half of the twentieth century, the automobile, which was destined for exportation and racing, had become one of the symbolic manufactured products of the Bohemian "industrial tradition”.