When Ford and Chevy Were Argentine

Abstract

This article focuses on Argentine car racing, and more specifically, the car racing class that from the 1930s through the early 1970s was the country’s most popular racing event, Turismo de Carretera (touring car racing or TC). For decades, TC drew thousands of fans on paved freeways, on closed speedways, and along rough-and-tumble dirt routes through cities, towns, and the countryside. In the performance, consumption, and narratives of TC, Argentines made U.S. car brands their own. American autos became Argentine. In part, this is an analysis of a culturally constructed hybridity, the Argentine-American car. But more than that, the paper argues that in the 1950s and 1960s, TC transformed quintessential U.S. brands and cultural markers into representations of Argentine daring and mechanical know-how. The central figures in that transformation were the legions of local mechanics who made American cars Argentine through their brilliance under the hood and sometimes, behind the wheel as well.