This book traces the history of the automobile industry through profiles of over 125 automobile manufacturers from Detroit and surrounding suburbs. Information on company founders, key personnel, car specifications, and more, help tell the story of the American automobile industry. Over 500 photographs of automobiles, factories, company logos, and personnel, offer readers further insight into the industry's evolution over the last 100 years. Interesting anecdotes on the first gasoline stations, selling cars, roads, steering wheel placement, and more are also included.
The author, a licensed Professional Engineer, has family roots in the Detroit area and has also been employed in an engineering capacity by all Big Three automakers; GM, Ford, & Chrysler. He has often wondered how the auto industry got its beginning in such a place as Detroit, Michigan, way off the beaten path, in an isolated glove-shaped piece of land thrust up between two lakes, where weather can be severe. Ohio and Indiana, who were also very active in the creation of the auto industry, are in the same general area of the country as Michigan and share the same climate. Why would anyone favor this three state area? One would think that other parts of the country would be more conducive to the formation of such an important part of the history of this nation. After all, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana were not members of the original 13 states and therefore have to be considered less developed territories than the original thirteen states around the turn of the 19th century when the American Gasoline-powered automobile was invented. Read how the author has searched for the answers to these somewhat perplexing questions on why Detroit became the Motor City.
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.
A new global history of Fordism from the Great Depression to the postwar era As the United States rose to ascendancy in the first decades of the twentieth century, observers abroad associated American economic power most directly with its burgeoning automobile industry. In the 1930s, in a bid to emulate and challenge America, engineers from across the world flocked to Detroit. Chief among them were Nazi and Soviet specialists who sought to study, copy, and sometimes steal the techniques of American automotive mass production, or Fordism. Forging Global Fordism traces how Germany and the Soviet Union embraced Fordism amid widespread economic crisis and ideological turmoil. This incisive book recovers the crucial role of activist states in global industrial transformations and reconceives the global thirties as an era of intense competitive development, providing a new genealogy of the postwar industrial order. Stefan Link uncovers the forgotten origins of Fordism in Midwestern populism, and shows how Henry Ford's antiliberal vision of society appealed to both the Soviet and Nazi regimes. He explores how they positioned themselves as America's antagonists in reaction to growing American hegemony and seismic shifts in the global economy during the interwar years, and shows how Detroit visitors like William Werner, Ferdinand Porsche, and Stepan Dybets helped spread versions of Fordism abroad and mobilize them in total war. Forging Global Fordism challenges the notion that global mass production was a product of post–World War II liberal internationalism, demonstrating how it first began in the global thirties, and how the spread of Fordism had a distinctly illiberal trajectory.
"Vigorous, provocative... The Sack of Detroit is compelling, bold and stylishly written." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal A provocative, revelatory history of the epic rise—and unnecessary fall—of the U.S. automotive industry, uncovering the vivid story of innovation, politics, and business that led to a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today, from the acclaimed author of Hoover In the 1950s, America enjoyed massive growth and affluence, and no companies contributed more to its success than automakers. They were the biggest and best businesses in the world, their leadership revered, their methods imitated, and their brands synonymous with the nation's aspirations. But by the end of the 1960s, Detroit's profits had evaporated and its famed executives had become symbols of greed, arrogance, and incompetence. And no company suffered this reversal more than General Motors, which found itself the main target of a Senate hearing on auto safety that publicly humiliated its leadership and shattered its reputation. In The Sack of Detroit, Kenneth Whyte recounts the epic rise and unnecessary fall of America's most important industry. At the center of his absorbing narrative are the titans of the automotive world but also the crusaders of safety, including Ralph Nader and a group of senators including Bobby Kennedy. Their collision left Detroit in a ditch, launched a new era of consumer advocacy and government regulation, and contributed significantly to the decline of American enterprise. This is a vivid story of politics, business, and a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today.
The New York Times bestselling author of Bitter Brew chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the remarkable life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined. Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wooden wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village named Hollywood, California, where young Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied them to designing sleek, racy-looking automobile bodies for the fast crowd in the burgeoning silent movie business. As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass manufacturing, Harley returned to Michigan, where, at GM’s invitation, he introduced art into the rigid mechanics of auto-making. Over the next thirty years, he functioned as a kind of combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time, redefining the form and function of the country’s premier product. His impact was profound. When he retired as GM’s VP of Styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the manufacturing capitol of the world and General Motors ranked as the most successful company in the history of business. Knoedelseder tells the story in ways both large and small, weaving the history of the company with the history of Detroit and the Earl family as Fins examines the effect of the automobile on America’s economy, culture, and national psyche.
There isn't another place in the world that can match Detroit's automotive history. For nearly a century, what was conceived, designed, produced, and marketed from this town ruled the roads. So it only stands to reason that the Motor City is likely to host some of the country's greatest collector garages. From the personal home of the man who put America on wheels to the posh residences of current automotive icons such as Bob Lutz, Motor City Dream Garages takes readers on a guided tour of 20-plus of Motown's most interesting garages. Going beyond even these fantastic garagemahals, this book also takes readers inside select company garages for exclusive looks at the unique and important collections amassed by companies such as General Motors and Roush Industries (parent company to Roush Racing, owned by Jack Roush). If you like both garages and the beautiful machines within, this book is for you!
