"The city of tomorrow, built upon a motor vehicle foundation, will be a better and more efficient city in which to live and work than are the cities of today."

These words were written in 1941 by E.E. East, chief engineer of the Southern California Automobile Club and a founding father of Los Angeles’ freeway system.

More than six decades later, Mr. East’s bold prediction about the role of the automobile in our lives and society can still cause a heated argument.

For some, cars continue to be rolling symbols of modernity, freedom and prosperity, as essential to the American way of life as, well, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To their critics, though, cars are curses, at the root of such problems as gridlock, smog, suburban sprawl and the triumph of conspicuous consumption.

Nowhere is this argument between car lovers and car bashers more relevant than Southern California, a corner of the world synonymous with both the agonies and ecstasies of the automobile age. This is the place, after all, where an exhilarating Sunday drive on the curves of Mulholland or Sunset Boulevard can be followed by weekdays spent imprisoned in rush hour traffic.

In this edition of "Web Stories" we’ll examine Southern California’s ambivalent attitudes toward automobiles and learn how cars collide with local culture.