Vaughan unfolded for me all his obsessions with the mysterious eroticism of wounds: the perverse logic of blood-soaked instrument panels, seat-belts smeared with excrement, sun-visors lined with brain tissue. ibid. p12
Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised an endless almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions: the lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheeks of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse. ibid. p13
Thinking of Vaughan now, drowning in his own blood under the police arc-lights, I remember the countless imaginary disasters he described as we cruised together along the airport expressways. He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack-knifing butane tankers … ibid. p13
I think now of the other crashes we visualized, absurd deaths of the wounded, maimed and distraught. ibid. p15
This pool of vomit with its clots of blood like liquid rubies, as viscous and discreet as everything produced by Catherine, still contains for me the essence of the erotic delirium of the car-crash, more exciting than her own rectal and vaginal mucus … ibid. p16
An uneasy euphoria carried me towards the hospital. I vomited across the steering wheel, half-conscious of a series of unpleasant features. ibid. p23
The flashing lances of afternoon light deflected from the chromium panel trim tore at my skin. The hard jazz of radiator grilles, the motion of cars moving towards London Airport along the sunlit oncoming lanes, the street furniture and route indicators – all these seemed threatening and super-real, as exciting as the accelerating pintables of a sinister amusement arcade released on to these highways. ibid. p49
The pressure of her thighs against the hot plastic formed a module of intense excitement. Already I guessed that she was well aware of this. By a terrifying paradox, a sexual act between us would be a way of taking her revenge on me. ibid. p72
To the north of the terminal buildings I could see the high deck of the flyover straddling the airport entrance tunnel, clogged with traffic that seemed about to re-enact a slow-motion dramatization of our crash. ibid. p72
In the lavatory of the casualty department I stood beside Vaughan at the urinal stalls. I looked down at his penis, wondering if this too was scarred. The glans, propped between his index and centre fingers, carried a sharp notch, like a canal for surplus semen or vinal mucus. What part of some crashing car had marked his penis, and in what marriage of his orgasm and a chromium instrument panel? ibid. p91
Above us, along the motorway embankment, the headlamps of the waiting traffic illuminated the evening sky like lanterns hung on the horizon. ibid. p92
I could imagine her sitting in the car of some middle-aged welfare officer, unaware of the conjunction formed by their own genitalia and the stylized instrument panel, a euclid of eroticism and fantasy that would be revealed for the first time within the car-crash, a fierce marriage pivoting on the fleshy points of her knees and pubis. ibid. p99
The crushed body of the sports car had turned her into a being of free and perverse sexuality, releasing within its dying chromium and leaking engine-parts, all the deviant possibilities of her sex. ibid. p99
A sharp but not unpleasant smell rose from his white jeans, a blend of semen and engine coolant. ibid. p102
His photographs of sexual acts, of sections of automobile radiator grilles and instrument panels, conjunctions between elbow and chromium window-sill, vulva and instrument binnacle, summed up the possibilities of a new logic created by these multiplying artefacts, the codes of a new marriage of sensation and possibility. ibid. p106
As we drove along Western Avenue I wanted her body to embrace the compartment of the car. In my mind I pressed her moist vulva against every exposed panel and fascia, I crushed her breasts gently against the door pillars and quarter windows, moved her anus in a slow spiral against the vinyl seat covers, placed her small hands against the instrument dials and window-sills. ibid. pp112-113
We had entered an immense traffic jam. From the junction of the motorway and Western Avenue to the ascent ramp of the flyover the traffic lanes were packed with vehicles, windshields leaching out the molten colours of the sun setting above the western suburbs of London. ibid. p151
He would stop me at traffic lights and stare for minutes at the junction of a wiper-blade mounting and windshield assembly in the car park. ibid. pp169-170
He was obsessed with the design of chromium accents on fender louvres, stainless-steel body-sill mouldings, windshield-wiper cowl panels, hood locks and door latches. ibid. p170
For Vaughan the motor-car was the sexual act’s greatest and only true locus. ibid. p171
The carapace of the instrument binnacle, the inclined planes and ashtrays gleamed around me like altarpieces, their geometries reaching towards my body like the stylized embraces of some hyper-cerebral machine. ibid. p200
Flies crawled across the oil-smeared windshield, vibrating against the glass. The chains of their bodies formed a blue veil between myself and the traffic moving along the motorway. I turned on the windscreen wipers, but the blades swept through the flies without disturbing them. ibid. p204
Meanwhile, the traffic moves in an unceasing flow along the flyover. The aircraft rise from the runways of the airport, carrying the remains of Vaughan’s semen to the instrument panels and radiator grilles of a thousand crashing cars, the leg stances of a million passengers. ibid. p224
The American dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, Vietnam. J G Ballard
A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinaesthetic factors, the stylising of motion, consumer goods, status – all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing!). J G Ballard, interview Penthouse September 1970
What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths. J G Ballard
In slow motion the test cars moved towards each other on collision courses. Unwinding behind them the coils that ran to the devices by the impact zone. As they collided, the debris of wings and fender floated into the air. The cars rocked against each other as they continued on their disintegrating courses … The air behind the cars was a carnival of arms and legs. Crash! 1971 BBC short film, J G Ballard commentary
The speed and violence of our age, the strange love affair with the machine … I’m interested in the automobile as a narrative structure. ibid.
Filmed in slow motion these crashes had a beautiful stylised grace. ibid.
But for brilliant writer J G Ballard this suburban sprawl is as provocative in its way as Tahiti was for Gauguin or Dublin for James Joyce. This, believe it or not, is a land of dreams. Profile: J G Ballard, BBC 2003
‘Disquieting diorama of pain and mutilation. Strange sexual wounds, imaginary Vietnam atrocities …’ ibid. Atrocity Exhibition
In his next novel Crash, Ballard followed this route to a shocking destination. A work which contrived the disturbing pile-up between sexual arousal and crumpled bodywork. ibid.
‘Throwing a literary bomb into a rather smug you know cafeteria.’ ibid. Ballard
You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! The Italian Job 1969 starring Michael Caine & Noel Coward & Benny Hill & Tony Beckley & Raf Vallone & Rossano Brazzi & Maggie Blye & Irene Handl & John le Mesurier & Fred Emney et al, director Peter Collinson
One condition: I drive my own car. Transporter 3 2008 starring Jason Statham & Francois Berleand & Natalya Rudakova & Robert Knepper & Jeroen Krabbe & David Atrakchi & Eriq Ebouaney et al, director Olivier Megaton, Frank to Villain
A guy I know needs a driver. The Liability 2012 starring Tim Roth & Jack O'Connell & Talulah Riley & Kierston Wareing & Peter Mullan & Christopher Hatherall & Jack McBride & Jenny Pike et al, director Craig Viveiros, baddie to young-un
You want to race tonight? You got four minutes, man. 2 Fast 2 Furious: Tokyo Drift 2003 starring Paul Walker & Tyrese Gibson & Eva Mendes & Cole Hauser & Chris Ludacris Bridges & Devon Aoki & James Remar & Thom Barry & Amaury Nolasco et al, director John Singleton geezer
It’s me they want: if they catch me, it’s on big numbers and anybody with me. Fast & Furious 2009 starring Vin Diesel & Paul Walker & Jordana Brewster & Michelle Rodriguez & John Ortiz & Laz Alonso & Gal Gadot & Jack Conley & Shea Whigham et al, director Justin Lin,
Do you know the difference between a cop and a criminal? One bad judgment call. ibid. chief rozzer