As Nick and Gatsby drive along in his creamy roadster, [W]ith fenders like wings," they cross the Queensborough bridge and view the city of New York in its "promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world"; however, this "promise" is negated by the hearse with drawn blinds in which Eastern Europeans look out with "tragic eyes." After them comes a limousine driven by a white chauffeur "in which sat three modish Negroes....the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry."
In Fitzgerald's novel, cars symbolize the driving and reckless nature of those in the Jazz Age. Perhaps, the limousine with the blacks, whose faces convey a "haughty rivalry" alludes to Lothrop Stoddard's book, The Rise of the Coloured Empires, which Tom Buchanan mentions in Chapter 1, a book that mathematically calculates that whites will eventually be outnumbered. As he watches this limousine, Nick thinks,
"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge...anything at all..."
With the two sights together, Nick and Gatsby may see that there is a driving movement toward change in the society and a death to many.
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