[burlesona]

There’s actually a dichotomy:

Car support was pretty ubiquitous in rural areas where you really needed a horse to get around anyway and it really did radically improve life to get a car.

But car support in cities was quite tepid before the late 20’s, and a significant concerted effort of government and industry together ramrodded them in and sold it through a long propaganda campaign that eventually was accepted.

There’s a book about this early history called Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton. The US came fairly close to banning cars in a number of cities, and to requiring mechanical governors to a 20mph limit in many others. A bunch of places installed memorials and monuments to “all the children slain by drivers” and so on.

It’s really interesting history that the auto lobby has worked hard to obscure.