Sweeping visions were something of a specialty for William Durant, founder of General Motors, and he ran true to form in a 1922 interview. "Most of us," he said, "will live to see this whole country covered with a network of motor highways built from point to point as the bird flies, the hills cut down, the dales bridged over, the obstacles removed." Given the intensity of America's love affair with the automobile, his prediction wasn't so far-fetched.