In African Motors, Joshua Grace examines how Tanzanian drivers, mechanics, and passengers reconstituted the automobile into a uniquely African form between the late 1800s and the early 2000s. Drawing on hundreds of oral histories, extensive archival research, and his ethnographic fieldwork as an apprentice in Dar es Salaam's network of garages, Grace counters the pervasive narratives that Africa is incompatible with technology and that the African use of cars is merely an appropriation of technology created elsewhere. Although automobiles were invented in Europe and introduced as part of colonial rule, Grace shows how Tanzanians transformed them, increasingly associating their own car use with maendeleo, the Kiswahili word for progress or development. Focusing on the formation of masculinities based in automotive cultures, Grace also outlines the process through which African men remade themselves and their communities by adapting technological objects and systems for local purposes. Ultimately, African Motors is an African-centered story of development featuring everyday examples of Africans forging both individual and collective cultures of social and technological wellbeing through movement, making, and repair.

American Motors was the little company that made a big impact. Maker of the Rambler family car, the Kenosha-based AMC offered an antidote to the excess of Detroit’s Big 3. But when America decided it wanted sporty, rather than econocars, AMC got groovy with the Javelin, AMX, Scrambler and Rebel Machine. American Motors was a proven performer in showrooms and on the track, with success in drag and road course racing. However, through it all came solid Rambler value, and a different approach from Detroit. An accent on consumer protection, along with brand label special editions. And when it came to blue sky thinking, AMC surpassed all with the Gremlin and Pacer small cars. Off road, Kenosha truly made Jeep ‘The One & Only,’ popularizing the brand and making it the sales success it is today. Beyond that, AMC created America’s first crossover, the Eagle. It all proved that America’s smallest ... was its biggest surprise!