A comprehensive history of the automobile in America. More than a century of coverage, including the latest models. Told in a lively picture-and-caption format. Thousands of images, including rare factory photos, period advertising, and styling proposals.
Witness the evolution of the American auto factory beginning with the basic hand-built assembly of cars built in the earliest part of the twentieth century, through the age of the assembly line, up to today's robotically-operated lines. Large photographs of the assembly lines in action send readers into nostalgic old factories. See the workers, the tools, the methods and the machines that combined their efforts with the ingenuity of industry players like Henry Ford, Ransom Olds. Walter Chrysler, and others to make possible the automobile's worldwide proliferation and availability. Flash back in time to witness the factories decade by decade in never-before published vintage photographs. Featured automakers include Ford, GM and Chrysler, along with smaller companies like Packard, Studebaker, Duesenberg and Auburn. Significant automotive industry events of the past combined with today's technological advances deliver a dynamic photographic look at the auto factories of yesterday and today.
In Comeback, Pulitzer Prize-winners Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White take us to the boardrooms, the executive offices, and the shop floors of the auto business to reconstruct, in riveting detail, how America's premier industry stumbled, fell, and picked itself up again. The story begins in 1982, when Honda started building cars in Marysville, Ohio, and the entire U.S. car industry seemed to be on the brink of extinction. It ends just over a decade later, with a remarkable turn of the tables, as Japan's car industry falters and America's Big Three emerge as formidable global competitors. Comeback is a story propelled by larger-than-life characters -- Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, Don Petersen, Roger Smith, among many others -- and their greed, pride, and sheer refusal to face facts. But it is also a story full of dedicated, unlikely heroes who struggled to make the Big Three change before it was too late.
In 2018 almost half of all vehicles made in North America were produced at foreign-owned plants, and the sector was on track to monopolize the market. Despite this, the industry has been overlooked compared with its domestic counterpart, both in scholarship and popular memory. Redressing this neglect, America’s Other Automakers provides a new history of the foreignowned auto sector, the first to extensively draw on archival sources and to articulate the human agency of participants, including workers, managers, and industry recruiters. Timothy J. Minchin challenges the view that the industry’s growth primarily reflected incentives, stressing human agency and the complexity of individual stories instead. Deeply human in its approach, the book also explores the industry’s impact on grassroots communities, showing that it had more costs than supporters acknowledged. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, America’s Other Automakers uncovers significant tensions over unionization, reports of discriminatory hiring, and unease about the industry’s rapid growth, critically exploring seven large assembly facilities and their impact on the communities in which they were built.
This much needed book is the first to provide a comprehensive history of the profession and aesthetics of American automobile design. The author reveals how the appearance of the automobile was shaped by the social conflicts arising from America's mass production system. He connects the social struggles of American society with the organizational struggles of designers to create symbol-laden substitutes for the American dream. Theoretically sophisticated, lucid and compelling, Auto-Opium will appeal to all interested in the American obsession with the car.
American Auto Legends presents more than 50 remarkable American cars in a chronological fully illustrated book filled with historic photographs. It covers all eras of American automobiles, from the "horseless carriages" of the early 1900s to the sleek and ultra-efficient machines of the early twenty-first century. Concise descriptions highlight the key features of each vehicle, while stunning images by one of America's leading car photographers provide the reader with an unparalleled visual record. American Auto Legends features all the major US manufacturersâ??including Buick, Chevrolet, Ford, Lincoln, and Studebakerâ??this book is an essential and authoritative guide to the many legends of the American highway. Includes biographies of key figures in the US automobile industry, a full technical glossary, and details of where the cars may be seen. This lavishly illustrated book will appeal to classic car enthusiasts worldwide.
“[Dan Albert] has a way of bringing automotive history to life.” —Jason Fogelson, Forbes The plain, old-fashioned, human-driven car built the American economy and helped shape our democratic creed. Driver’s ed made teenagers into citizens; auto repair made boys into men. For nearly a century, car culture has triumphed. But have we finally reached the end of the road? Fewer young people are learning to drive. Ride hailing is replacing car buying, and with electrification, a long and noble tradition of amateur car repair will soon come to an end. When a robot takes over the driver’s seat, what’s to become of us? Are We There Yet? carries us from horseless buggies to superhighways, and like any good road trip, it’s an adventure so fun you won’t even notice how much you’ve learned along the way.