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Despite the initial negative images people had of automobiles, between 1900 and 1915, the number of cars in America jumped from just 8,000 to more than 2 million. The man given the most credit for this rapid increase in automobiles is Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.
- When Were Cars invented?
- Henry Ford and William Durant
- Model T
- Automotive Industry Growing Pains
- Car Sales Stall
- GM Introduces ‘Planned Obsolescence’
- World War II and The Auto Industry
- Rise of Japanese Automakers
- U.S. Carmakers Retool
- Legacy of The U.S. Auto Industry
The 1901 Mercedes, designed by Wilhelm Maybach for Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, deserves credit for being the first modern motorcar in all essentials. Its thirty-five-horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower, and it achieved a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour. By 1909, with the most integrated automobile factory in Euro...
Bicycle mechanics J. Frank and Charles Duryea of Springfield, Massachusetts, had designed the first successful American gasoline automobile in 1893, then won the first American car racein 1895, and went on to make the first sale of an American-made gasoline car the next year. Thirty American manufacturers produced 2,500 motor vehicles in 1899, and ...
Given the American manufacturing tradition, it was also inevitable that cars would be produced in larger volume at lower prices than in Europe. The absence of tariff barriers between the states encouraged sales over a wide geographic area. Cheap raw materials and a chronic shortage of skilled labor early encouraged the mechanization of industrial p...
Ford’s mass production techniques were quickly adopted by other American automobile manufacturers. (European automakers did not begin to use them until the 1930s.) The heavier outlays of capital and larger volume of sales that this necessitated ended the era of easy entry and free-wheeling competition among many small producers in the American indu...
By 1927 replacement demand for new cars was exceeding demand from first-time owners and multiple-car purchasers combined. Given the incomes of the day, automakers could no longer count on an expanding market. Installment sales had been initiated by the makers of moderately priced cars in 1916 to compete with the Model T, and by 1925 about three-qua...
Market saturation coincided with technological stagnation: In both product and production technology, innovation was becoming incremental rather than dramatic. The basic differences that distinguish post-World War II models from the Model T were in place by the late 1920s—the self-starter, the closed all-steel body, the high-compression engine, hyd...
The automobile industry had played a critical role in producing military vehicles and war matériel in the First World War. During World War II, in addition to turning out several million military vehicles, American automobile manufacturers made some seventy-five essential military items, most of them unrelated to the motor vehicle. These materials ...
Engineering in the postwar era was subordinated to the questionable aesthetics of nonfunctional styling at the expense of economy and safety. And quality deteriorated to the point that by the mid-1960s American-made cars were being delivered to retail buyers with an average of twenty-four defects a unit, many of them safety-related. Moreover, the h...
In response, the American automobile industry in the 1980s underwent a massive organizational restructuring and technological renaissance. Managerial revolutions and cutbacks in plant capacity and personnel at GM, Ford and Chrysler resulted in leaner, tougher firms with lower break-even points, enabling them to maintain profits with lower volumes i...
The automobile has been a key force for change in twentieth-century America. During the 1920s the industry became the backbone of a new consumer goods-oriented society. By the mid-1920s it ranked first in value of product, and in 1982 it provided one out of every six jobs in the United States. In the 1920s the automobile became the lifeblood of the...
Cruising in automobiles such as the Duesenberg pictured above was popular in America, but this typically Sunday afternoon family past time was largely discontinued during the depression. Perhaps no invention affected American everyday life in the 20th century more than the automobile.
May 7, 2021 · The 1948 Cadillac’s purely decorative tailfins spark a car design phenomenon. America’s finned flourishes reach near-ridiculous proportions by the late 1950s.
Alec Issigonis's Mini and Fiat's 500 diminutive cars were introduced in Europe, while the similar kei car class became popular in Japan. The Volkswagen Beetle continued production after World War II and began exports to other nations, including the US.
Jan 1, 2017 · Cars became popular because the price of these machines had plummeted: a Ford Model T sold for $850 in 1908 but $260 in 1916, with a dramatic rise in reliability along the way.
Jun 8, 2023 · From the Model T Ford car to the 1936 Chevrolet Corvette, they have captured the imagination of people around the globe, while representing important milestones in American history. In this blog post, we’ll take a drive down memory lane with some of the most famous cars made in the US. We’ll explore their design, engineering, and cultural impact.
