Fast Hybridity: When Ford, Chevy, and Dodge Were Argentine, 1940–80

Late one Friday night in 1976, on a street in Brandsen (Buenos Aires province), for a price and in a makeshift ring, fifteen year-old Juan Martín Coggi was fighting all comers. All of a sudden a Ford Falcon appeared. Everybody ran. According to Coggi, a future world champion boxer, people knew simply that the Falcon could be deadly. It would be Coggi’s closest interaction with military authority during almost eight years of dictatorship (1976-83).

For many Argentines today, the small, boxy Ford Falcon was the iconic tool of dictatorship terror that Coggi had recognized. The federal government bought hundreds for use as unmarked vehicles at the service of police and military units in the kidnapping and disappearance of enemies. But many Argentines have alternative memories of the Falcon. It was (and still is for a dwindling few) a workhorse that could always be relied on for a few more months, after just one more servicing, or one last set of repairs. In addition, many remember the Falcon as fast, for its record twenty victories in the enormously popular sport of turismo carretera (touring car racing or TC). For thousands of TC fans, the Falcon is an Argentine legend as are the men who drove it to victory.

This paper tests the hypothesis that through the business, popularity, performance, consumption, and narratives of TC -- in how Argentines made the Falcon and other U.S. car brands (mostly manufactured in Argentina) their own -- American autos became Argentine. In part, this is an analysis of culturally constructed hybridities. But more than that, the paper argues that as popular constructions (supported by astute automobile company advertising campaigns), TC transformed quintessential U.S. brands and cultural markers into representations of both Argentine tradition and modernity.