Automobiles and transport, Roland Barthes
I think cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. - Roland Barthes' The New Citroën (1957) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Automobiles_and_transport