Automobile

A typically four-wheeled automotive vehicle designed for transportation invented in the late nineteenth century and destined to have a profound influence on the American economy.
The modern automobile first appeared on the market in the 1880s, although it is impossible to credit a single inventor with its creation. Key inventors included Germans Gottlieb Daimler, who produced the first modern gas engine and mounted it on a carriage in 1886, and Karl Benz, who patented a gas-powered vehicle that same year and integrated it into a three-, then four-wheel, chassis. Though Panhard and Levassor became the world’s first automobile company, the Benz Company became the world’s largest producer of automobiles by 1900. Charles and Frank Duryea started making automobiles in the United States as early as 1888, but the U.S. automobile industry did not really start until the turn of the twentieth century. In 1899, Ransom Olds moved to Detroit and started the Olds Motor Works, and in 1901 he began to manufacture a standard, relatively affordable, automobile. In 1903, Henry Ford formed his own company, and in 1908 he revolutionized the American automobile industry with his Model T. Ford designed the Model T for the average American, seeking to sell the car to farmers and small business people. This design became even more affordable when Ford moved production to a new assembly-line factory in Highland Park, Michigan. With this new system of production, which he coined “mass production,” the Model T became increasingly affordable, even to the factory workers who produced the cars. By 1922 it cost just $225. Nearly as important as the Model T’s mass-producible design was the network of local dealers and consumer loan opportunities Ford created. Ford brought production of the Model T to an end in 1927 after 15 million Model Ts had rolled off the assembly line. Ford and the Model T inspired a host of competitors, including General Motors (1908).
By 1925 a majority of Americans owned cars. The proliferation of the automobile in the United States led to fundamental cultural, social, and economic changes. Because the car made cities accessible from greater distances, suburbs dependent on automobile traffic began to develop in the 1920s; they had another explosive growth period after World War II. The car spawned a host of leisure and lifestyle institutions, from the self-service grocery store (1916) to the shopping mall (1923) to the drive-in movie (1933). Car travel became a vacation activity, and in 1926 the first motel opened in San Luis Obispo, California.
With the flood of cars came the need for new infrastructure and regulation. The Federal Road Act of 1916 began the federal government’s effort to transform muddy roads into a network of interconnected paved highways. In the 1954 Federal-Aid Highway Act, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized $175 million in federal funds on a 60–40 matching basis to states for the construction of the interstate highway system.
Cars themselves became the target of increased safety engineering in the 1950s and 1960s with the introduction of technologies borrowed from race cars, such as seat belts, disc brakes, the collapsible steering column, and head rests. Following the lead of California, the first state to pass emission controls, Congress passed the 1970 Clean Air Act banning leaded gasoline and requiring catalytic converters to reduce the toxic emissions of automobiles. Taking advantage of this legislation and the oil crises of the 1970s, smaller, more fuel-efficient Japanese cars challenged Detroit, and by 1980 they had captured nearly 30 percent of the American market.
American manufacturers regained a portion of their former market share in the 1980s as consumers demanded larger, more powerful cars. Through mergers and partnerships with German and Japanese automakers, American manufacturers introduced cars designed with German influence and produced using Japanese quality control techniques. In addition, globalization has redistributed the American automobile industry to new regions such as Toyota’s Kentucky plant, BMW’s South Carolina operations, and Daimler-Chrysler’s Alabama factory. American manufacturers also moved some production to Mexico and Canada. A major trade policy issue arose in the 1990s with U.S. interests pushing for access to protected Asian markets.

References
Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Jennings, Jan, ed. Roadside America: The Car in Design and Culture. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990.
Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Association. Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures. Detroit, MI: Automobile Manufacturers Association, annual publication.
See also: Federal Highway Act of 1956; North American Free Trade Agreement.