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America
Gets Its Wheels
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PAGE CONTENTS: The Tale of the Big Three How America Got Its Wheels How General Motors Took the Lead The Future of Cars?
The Lincoln Highway
Black Tires
The Tale of
the Big Three
America's
automakers are no longer fighting to stay on top. They're fighting to survive. Sales are slumping, credit is crunched,
and new ideas are in short supply. On top of it all, any plan to save Detroit has to reckon with its expensive labor agreements
and spiraling benefits costs.
It hasn't always been like this. Once upon a time, America's carmakers were
kings of their industry. We'll look back at those days later this week and see how the U.S. auto industry got a mighty
headstart. But first, a sad tale: how Detroit's smokestacks stack up now.
From the end of World War II to the
late 1960s, no fin on America's cars could be too tall, no chrome bumper too shiny. For General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler--the
"Big Three" of the U.S. auto industry--commanded more than 90 percent of the country's auto sales.
They were good businesses, too. From 1949 to 1969, the Big Three automakers were consistently more profitable than the average
U.S. manufacturing firm. General Motors even became the largest corporation in the world, as America and the world purchased
more and more cars from Detroit.
But Detroit's hold began to slip as early as the late 1960s. By the time the
1973 oil crisis hit, foreign competitors like Toyota and Volkswagen--skilled at making smaller, more fuel-efficient cars--had
gradually crept into the U.S. market. And the industry's growth had begun to level off.
Foreign competitors
have eroded Detroit's market share ever since. By 1990, the Big Three's U.S. market share had slipped to 71.6 percent.
By 2000, it had slipped to 66.7 percent. Today, fewer than half of the vehicles sold in the United States are made by the
Big Three. For 2008, their combined U.S. market share was just 48.5 percent.
In fact, in 2006, Japan overtook the
United States and became the world's leading producer of automobiles. And, in 2008, Toyota supplanted General Motors as
the world's top auto seller. For 77 years, no company sold more vehicles than General Motors. But no longer.
The Big Three still employ about a quarter of a million U.S. workers. And, according to one economic analyst, each job in
auto production "supports five other jobs in the economy." But even with billions of dollars in government
loans, Detroit's future is unlikely to look rosier than its past.
--Michael Himick and Steve Sampson
KnowledgeNews is brought to you
by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business dedicated to supporting lifelong learners. Copyright © 2009, Every
Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
How America Got Its Wheels
We started our look at the U.S. auto industry with the tale of the Big Three. By the story's end, Japan had passed
the United States as the world's leading producer of automobiles, and Toyota had dethroned General Motors as the single largest auto seller.
But there is still one category in which the
United States leads: no country in the world contains more cars. In fact, more than 240 million "horseless carriages" ply American roads. Speedsters race them.
The police chase them. For better or worse, nearly all U.S. citizens embrace them.
Those metallic millions started
with Ford--Henry Ford. No, Ford didn't invent the car. But his car changed the way the country moves. Here's
how it happened; how Ford got the U.S. auto industry rolling.
Henry Ford was born in 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan, four weeks after the
Battle of Gettysburg. As a boy, he had an instinct for gadgets and machines but little use for literature or history,
which he considered "more or less bunk." He quit school at the age of 15 and soon headed for the big city.
By the 1890s, Ford had a good job as chief engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, but the ambitious young workaholic had his eye on even bigger
things. The nation was caught in a "bicycle craze," and the sight of millions of people wheeling around the country
gave Ford ideas. So did the "Silent Otto" internal
combustion engine, which he saw demonstrated in Detroit at the decade's start.
Ever since the debut
of the locomotive, inventors had been dreaming of a practical horseless carriage, and Ford
was determined to create his own. In fact, others beat him to the punch. By the late 1880s, both Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler were building cars with internal combustion engines in
Germany. Ford didn't even build the first gasoline-powered car in Detroit. In March 1896, Charles Brady King rolled
out "Tootsie": a wooden wagon with a four-cylinder engine and a top speed of five miles
per hour (8 km/h).
In the wee hours of June 4, 1896, after a continuous 48-hour stretch of adjustments and
banging away in the shed, Ford unveiled his "Quadricycle" to a bleary-eyed assistant and his wife Clara. Weighing
in at 500 pounds (225 kg), the little beauty had a two-cylinder, four-horsepower engine, four bicycle
wheels, two driving speeds, no reverse gear, no brakes, and a modified doorbell buzzer for a horn.
Ford's
Quadricycle could burn rubber at speeds undreamed of by Charles King: a blistering 20 miles an hour (32 km/h).
Elated with his creation, Ford hopped into the driver's seat and prepared to take it for a spin. Unfortunately,
it was then that he noticed the shed door was too narrow. No matter. Ford grabbed an ax, smashed a hole in the brick wall,
and trundled out. (His landlord was so impressed with the car that he refused payment for the damage.)
Two months
later, at the concluding banquet of the 1896 Edison Illuminating Companies Convention, Ford was thrilled to meet his idol,
Thomas Edison, whom he considered
"the greatest man in the world." Edison asked the young man to explain his machine, and Ford obliged by sketching
out the particulars on the back of a menu. Impressed, Edison banged his fist on the table and exclaimed, "Young
man, that's the thing! You have it. Keep at it." Later in life, Ford recalled, "That bang on the table meant
worlds to me."
Ford started the Ford Motor Company in 1903 with a group of associates, after an earlier business venture turned sour.
By 1907, he and his family controlled the business. The next year, Ford started manufacturing the car that would change the
speed, look, and nature of American life: the Model T.
Up to that point, cars were viewed as road-hogging toys
for the idle rich. But the Model T was designed to be practical and affordable for everyone. Billboards said, "Even you
can afford a Ford." One of the original prophets of mass production, Ford designed an innovative assembly line that helped
him keep the Model T's price down. By 1927, its price had fallen steadily from $850 to below $300, wiping out many of
the car companies that had tried to compete.
The Model T had a 20-horsepower engine and a top speed of 40 to 45
miles per hour (64 to 72 km/h). Until 1914, it came in several colors, but after that, the speed of the assembly line required
the paint to dry rapidly, and only black would do. Ford, famously paternalistic, is supposed to have said buyers "can
have any color they want, as long as it's black."
Ford made about 17 million Model Ts and became the largest
automobile manufacturer in the world. At one point, a new Model T rolled out of the factory at Highland Park, Michigan, every
24 seconds. Americans now had a vastly increased sense of mobility and independence. Filling stations,
parking lots, and highways spread across the country--and hitching posts, carriages, and trolley cars began to disappear.
Eventually, Ford's decision to stick to making one model of car allowed other companies to pass his by. By
1931, Ford had fallen behind General Motors
in sales. Still, Ford's ingenuity and business acumen helped drive America into the 20th century. He wasn't always
a pleasant man, but in the words of Will Rogers, Henry Ford "changed the habits of more people than Caesar, Mussolini,
Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Xerxes, Amos 'n' Andy, and Bernard Shaw." More than anyone else, Henry Ford gave
America its wheels.
--Jeffery Vail
KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an
independent small business dedicated to supporting lifelong learners. Copyright © 2009, Every Learner, Inc. All rights
reserved. |
How General Motors Took the
Lead
As part of our look at the U.S.
auto industry, we saw how Henry Ford put America on wheels. We also saw Ford fall behind General Motors. Now,
practically everyone has heard some version of Henry Ford's famous story. But where did General Motors come from? How
did it take the lead?
Well, if you look back to the earliest days of General Motors, you won't find a steering
wheel or an engine. You'll find a bathtub, with David Buick inside. The Scottish-born Buick was a successful
plumber/inventor. In the 1880s, he developed a method for adhering porcelain enamel to cast-iron tubs that is still used today.
And by the 1890s, Buick's interests had turned from plumbing to engine valves.
Buick invented the overhead
valve engine, which would become an industry standard. He was less successful getting his motor company on the road,
however. He had a rapid succession of companies that all folded due to lack of cash or lack of product. In one three-year
period, he reportedly managed to produce only two cars--hardly mass production!
In 1904, when Buick's latest
company, the Buick Motor Company of Flint, Michigan, again ran into money troubles, the backers brought in the leading,
local horse-drawn carriage maker to jump-start the company. William Durant came aboard as Buick's general
manager.
With Durant's promotional expertise and sales abilities, the company was soon galloping ahead in sales
of the horseless carriages. By 1908, the company's finances had improved enough that Durant was able to create a
holding company for Buick, naming it General Motors.
Meanwhile, also in the late 1890s, Ransom E. Olds founded
his own car company, introducing the Curved Dash Oldsmobile in 1901. Selling for $650, this was the first mass-produced,
low-priced car, predating Henry Ford's Model T. Still, while at first the Curved Dash was a big success, by 1907
the company's finances were faltering.
Durant stepped in and purchased Oldsmobile as General Motors' first
acquisition in 1908. He followed up in 1909 by buying Cadillac, Oakland (which would later become Pontiac), and
many smaller firms, including the Reliance Motor Truck Company and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company (the predecessors of GMC
Truck).
But all the acquisitions soon left Durant strapped for cash, too. A bankers' trust took over General
Motors in 1910 and told Durant to hit the road. Forced out of the company he founded, Durant turned to Louis Chevrolet,
a race car driver, who had once raced cars for Durant to promote Buick.
In addition to racing, Chevrolet designed
cars. In 1911, he and Durant went into business together, forming the Chevrolet Motor Car Company. With Chevrolet's designs
and Durant's salesmanship, the company did well and Durant secretly began buying shares in General Motors. By 1916, Durant
had enough shares to take back control of General Motors and become president of the company. The Chevrolet brand became
part of General Motors soon after.
In 1920, the bankers forced Durant out again, this time for good. He tried starting
another car company, but it never did as well as General Motors. Durant ended up opening a bowling alley in Flint in
1940, which he ran until he had a stroke in 1942. None of the key figures in General Motors' turbulent start--Durant,
Olds, Buick, or Chevrolet--ended up wealthy. In fact, most died penniless.
But General Motors continued to grow
under the new leadership of Alfred P. Sloan. Sloan organized all the brands assembled by Durant into differently priced
rungs on "the ladder of success," so that each brand represented a step up for a car buyer. From an
entry-level Chevrolet to a luxurious Cadillac, Sloan's General Motors had "a car for every purse and purpose."
By 1931, no car company sold more.
--Rebecca Bigelow KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business
dedicated to supporting lifelong learners. Copyright © 2009, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Future of Cars?
We've been looking at the U.S. auto industry.
We've answered questions about its past. The question now is, what is its future? Will Detroit make a comeback? Will Japan
lengthen its lead? Or will a new generation of Henry Fords reinvent the car entirely for the 21st century?
Fans of the Tesla Motors Roadster shown above say the car is ripe for reinvention. Made by a Silicon Valley start-up,
the new Tesla Roadster can accelerate like a Corvette, going from 0 to 60 miles per hour (100 km/h) in less than four seconds.
But despite that power, its gas mileage is off the charts--because it's an electric car. Is this the future of driving?
Electric power? Let's plug in our brains and see.
Electric cars are nothing new. They've been buzzing around
for as long as gas-burners have. In fact, a century ago--before Henry Ford's Model T--a good share of the cars,
trucks, and buses hitting U.S. city streets were electric. Heavyweights like Thomas Alva Edison even bet a decade
of work on batteries that they would be the future.
Henry Ford has obviously gotten the better of that bet so far.
But Edison was no fool. From a mechanical perspective, electric cars are generally simpler and more durable than gas-burners,
with fewer parts to manufacture and maintain. The motor in the Tesla Roadster, for example, has only one moving
part--the rotor--and weighs just 70 pounds (32 kg).
Electric cars also make far less mess per mile. That's
true even if the electricity they need to magnetically turn their motors ultimately comes from a coal-burning power plant.
(And in the United States, about half the nation's electricity still comes from burning coal.
How can burning coal for Edison pollute less than burning gas for Ford? For
one thing, pollution is easier to control if it comes from a single plant rather than a million tailpipes. (Electric cars
don't even have tailpipes.) For another, electric motors are more efficient at converting energy into mileage. Gas-burning
engines typically turn only about 20 percent of input energy into mechanical work. The rest is lost as heat. The Tesla
Roadster's motor converts more than 80 percent.
So why did Edison lose his bet on the electric car? At least
in part because he failed to make a significantly better battery. Some of the earliest electric cars, built in the 1890s and
1900s, could go 50 to 80 miles (80 to 130 km) on a single lead-acid battery charge. A century later, many electric cars still
can't go much farther than that.
Lead-acid batteries--good old car batteries--just don't have the
juice. But now, cell phones, laptops, and digital cameras are driving the change that may change driving. In particular,
they're driving the development of nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) and lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries--batteries that can
hold more charge in less space than ever before.
The engineers at Tesla Motors, for example, are powering their
roadster with what they say is "one of the largest and most technically advanced Li-ion battery packs in the world,"
to give it a range greater than any electric car in history: 245 miles (400 km). It's basically a 1,000-pound (450-kg)
laptop battery. Whether electric cars can ever overtake gas-burners may depend on how good such can get.
--Michael Himick and Steve Sampson
KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business dedicated to supporting lifelong
learners. Copyright © 2009, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved. |
The Lincoln Highway
On September 13, 1913, the famous Lincoln Highway, the first paved transamerican highway, was completed
from New York to San Francisco. Prior to it being built, there
were almost no good roads to speak of in the United States. The relatively few miles of improved road were only around towns
and cities. A road was "improved" if it was graded; travelers were lucky to have gravel or brick. Most roads, though,
were dirt. The Lincoln Highway was the first major roadway constructed with the automobile in mind. Later in 1928, thousands
of Boy Scouts fanned out along the highway. At an average of about one per mile, they installed
small concrete markers with a small bust of Lincoln and the inscription, "This highway dedicated to Abraham
Lincoln."
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc., and its licensors. All rights
reserved.
Black Tires
In the early days of automobiles, tires were seldom black.
The rubber from which they were made was naturally colored off-white or tan. Today's black tires owe their color to an accidental discovery. In 1885, the rubber tire company B.F. Goodrich
decided to try black tires, thinking that they might not show the dirt as much. They added carbon black pigment to the rubber
mixture. To their surprise, they discovered that the carbon-colored rubber tires were five times more durable than the uncolored
ones. Today's tires are far tougher than those first
black tires, and much more elaborate. They contain dozens of layers, with steel belts and computer-designed treads. But the
basic black rubber is still an important part of the design. Unknown
author/copyright. Used without permission, but with the best of intentions.
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