Automotive History
America! America!
The greatest legend in the American automobile development is the common
belief that the car is an American institution. The American car inventors
were really Johnny-come-latelys, when it came to producing the automobile,
but once they got going, they made up for all the centuries of lost time.
Although the automobile was becoming an increasingly familiar sight
in Europe in the 1890s, it was considered a freakish contraption in the
United States. Roads were poor and few. Americans finally became receptive
to the idea of the automobile when they realized that, with a car, they
could go where they wanted to go without having to use the railroad.
Detroit is not the original forge where the U.S. auto industry took
shape: Hartford, Cleveland, and at least a dozen other places have better
credentials. Many men and hundreds of hours of creating, designing, and
hard work went into the creation of American cars. Several crude, experimental
motorized buggies had been built in the U.S. before the Duryea brothers
built the first successful, internal-combustion car in 1892-93.
A carriage maker in Flint, Michigan, William C. Durant designed a motorcar
and went on to organize Buick, General Motors, and Chevrolet. George M.
Pierce made bird cages, bicycles and finally, automobiles--Pierce-Arrows.
Charles W. Nash made the Nash. In 1954 the Nash Kelvinator Corp. merged
with the Hudson Motor Car Company to become the American Motors Corporation.
Car designers came from all areas and occupations. Some succeeded, but
most failed. Then, along came the son of a Michigan farmer. His name was
Henry Ford.
In 1879, Henry Ford was sixteen years old when he got a job in Detroit.
In his spare time he built an internal-combustion engine from plans he
found in a magazine. It was a bicycle-wheeled, tiller-steered two-seater,
without brakes or reverse gear. It was so noisy that it was condemned by
the public as a nuisance.
In 1898, he built an improved vehicle, but it failed in a year. Finally
he produced an automobile that was bigger, more powerful, and much faster.
A well-known bicycle rider drove the car in a race and won. The publicity
got Ford financial backing.
The first popular car was a roadster, the "Oldsmobile," designed as
an economy car by Ransom E. Olds. This car had two seats and a one-cylinder,
three-horsepower engine.
In 1900, only 8,000 cars were registered in the U.S. Olds introduced
quantity production, and became a very rich man. The car sold for $650,
about half the price of competitors. Sales zoomed from 425 in 1901, to
6,500 in 1905.
Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903. Ford first brought
out the Model A: a small, two cylinder car with an eight- horsepower engine,
which sold for $850. The next year, the Model B Ford was added, a four-cylinder,
which sold for $2,000. In 1906, Ford added the Model K, an important milestone.
In 1906, New York held two auto shows. In Madison Square Garden, there
were 220 exhibits; the 69th Regiment Armory show had 205 exhibitors. Ford's
Model K, introduced at Madison Square Garden, was big, heavy, expensive
and a mistake. It could go 60 mph with its six-cylinder, 40-horsepower
engine. It sold for $2,800, $2,000 more than a Cadillac. Ford lost money
on every one sold, so he concentrated on a light, simple, rugged model
that could be sold inexpensively; what he termed "the universal automobile."
The new design was called the Model T. Adapted from the model N, it
was solidly constructed, and easy to operate and repair. Its chassis was
high to provide good clearance. A four-cylinder engine produced 20-horsepower
in two forward speeds and a reverse. In 1909, the least expensive Model
T got about thirty miles to the gallon. Customers responded to the advantages
of the Model T, and new, plants were constructed. Production increased
from 10,000 in 1909 to 78,000 in 1912. In 1913, Ford found a better, faster
way to build cars.
In 1914, Ford opened the world's first auto assembly line. Production
jumped to 472,000; a car could be turned out in 93 minutes. In 1924, when
half of the cars in the world were Fords, the Model T sold for $290 and
profits piled up. The last "tin lizzy" (the 15,007,003rd) rolled off the
production line in 1927. It was truly the "universal car," in every corner
of the world.
The eighteen-year supremacy of the Ford caused the disappearance of
many of the smaller car companies and the emergence of others. One of the
consolidators was the General Motors Corporation. William C. Durant bought
out the Buick Motor Company in 1904. He incorporated General Motors in
1908 and merged Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Oakland (Pontiac) into
a single corporation. Ford's monopoly ended after WWI; other manufacturers
began to make cheaper, more attractive cars. In 1916, the Chevrolet Motor
Company put out a four-cylinder model that eventually passed the Ford as
the best-selling car in America.
Another strong competitor of the Model T was a tough four-cylinder Dodge
manufactured by John and Horace Dodge. By 1924, they assembled 1,000 cars
per day. Four years later the company was purchased for what was then a
world's record price of $175,000,000 by Walter P. Chrysler, of the Chrysler
Corporation. In 1928 the Chrysler Corporation started selling Dodges, DeSotos
Plymouths, and Chryslers.
By 1928, competition had forced new standard equipment. The self- starter
was invented in 1911, resulting in more drivers. The car had gone from
a wooden, open vehicle to a steel, fully enclosed year-round sedan. The
modern automobile was mechanically "complete" by 1929, when 4,587,400 cars
were sold in the United States. All the major mechanical developments since
then have been improvements or refinements of existing systems.
Henry Ford did not create the automobile nor the automobile industry.
When he built his first internal-combustion engine from magazine plans
in 1896 and mounted it in a carriage, others had already built better motor
vehicles than his crude attempt. Those others must yield the stage to Henry
Ford in one aspect; it was he who captained the manufacturing revolution.
He jacked up the world and slid four wheels under it. He said he would
democratize the automobile and when he was through, just about everyone
would have a car. He kept his word. Life would never be the same again.
