Cars in Grapes of Wrath

The author of Grapes of Wrath does an excellent job pulling the reader into the story and making them feel the desperation and hopelessness that those families attempting to make it to California for a better life must have been feeling. Since most of them did not know much about cars, their complete and total dependence on them to carry them to their destinations was an extremely stressful thing. The passage below is an excerpt of the text for illustration:

"In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting robs hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks listened apprehensively. how far between towns? It is a terror between towns. if something breaks - well, if something breaks we camp right here while Jim walks to town and gets a part and walks back and - how much food we got?
Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gearshift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses; for a change of tone, a variation if rhythm may mean - a week here? - But that thudding as the car moves along -can't hear that- just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn't gettin someplace. Maybe a bearing's startin to go. Jesus, if it's a bearing what'll we do? Money's goin fast."

In that time period there were not many places that a tenant farmer would have to go so they did not have any reason, to own a vehicles, and many of them were too poor to have one even if they did have some kind of reason. So, when it was time for them to travel out west they had no idea bout how to run cars and keep their maintenance going at a cost that would not break them. In the case of the Joads the only two with any sort of experience with cars were Al and Tom, and Tom only had experience because he drove cars while he was in McAlester prison. As a result, the family was wholly dependent on those two boys to make their beat-up car take them all the way to California.