How Car Engine Works
Although the plan for the modern automobile was perfected in Germany and France in the 1800s, Americans have dominated the industry in the first half of the twentieth century, Henry Ford pioneered mass production techniques that became the standard, with Ford, General Motors and Chrysler emerging automakers Big Three in the 1920s manufacturers channeled their resources to the army during the Second World war, and after the car production in Europe and Japan rose to meet demand once essential to the expansion of American urban centers, industry had become a shared global company with the rise of Japan as the first automaker in 1980.
Although the car was to have the greatest economic and social impact in the United States, it was first perfected in Germany and France in the late nineteenth century by men like Nicolaus Otto, Gottlieb Daimler, Carl Benz and Emile Levassor.
1901 Mercedes, designed by Wilhelm Maybach for Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, the merit of being the first modern car essentially Its thirty-five horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower, and it reached a speed of fifty -Three miles per hour but as late as 1909, with the most integrated car plant in Europe, Daimler employed about seventeen hundred workers to produce less than a thousand cars a year.
Nothing illustrates the superiority of European design better than the contrast between this first model Mercedes and Ransom E Olds 1901-1906 a cylinder, three horses, free-director bar, curved dash Oldsmobile, which was simply a motorized buggy horse but Olds sold for only 650, putting within reach of the American middle class, and the output Olds 1904 5508 units exceeded the entire auto production previously accomplished the central problem of automotive technology during the first decade of twentieth century would be reconciled to the advanced design of the 1901 Mercedes with moderate prices and low operating costs of the Olds This would be overwhelmingly an American success.
Mechanical bike J Frank and Charles E Duryea of Springfield, Massachusetts had designed the successful first automobile in the US gasoline in 1893, then won the first American automobile race in 1895, and continued to make the first sale of a car US gasoline is the next thirty years American manufacturers produced 2,500 motor vehicles in 1899, and some 485 companies entered the business in the next decade in 1908, Henry Ford introduced the model T and William C. Durant founded General Motors.
New enterprises operating in an unprecedented market seller for expensive consumer goods produced with its vast size and a hinterland of scattered and isolated colonies, the United States had a much need for automobile transportation that nations Europe Great demand was ensured also by a significantly higher income distribution per capita income and more equitable than in European countries.
Given the American manufacturing tradition, it was also inevitable that the cars would be produced in large volume at lower prices than in Europe The absence of tariff barriers between states encouraged sales over a wide geographic area of the raw materials low prices and a chronic shortage of skilled labor in the early encouraged the mechanization of industrial processes in the US This required the standardization of products and led to the production volume of products such as firearms, of sewing machines, bicycles and many other items in 1913, the United States produced a total of 485000 World 606.124 motor vehicles.
The Ford Motor Company has far exceeded its competitors in order to reconcile the state of the art design with reasonable price Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal called the four-cylinder, five horses, 600 Ford Model N 1906 to 1907 the first instance of a low -cost motorcar driven by a gas engine having cylinders sufficiently to give the shaft a rotary pulse for each revolution of the shaft which is constructed and offered in many flooded with orders, Ford installed improved equipment production and after 1906 was able to make deliveries of a hundred cars a day.
Encouraged by the success of the model N, Henry Ford was determined to build a better car for the great multitude The four-cylinder, twenty horsepower Model T, first offered in October 1908, sold for 825 His two-speed planetary transmission as it is easy to drive, and features such as the removable cylinder head made easy to repair its high chassis has been designed to eliminate the bumps in rural roads in steel vanadium made the model T a car lighter and tougher, and new methods of castings in particular the engine block casting has helped keep the price down.
Committed to high volume production Model T Ford was innovative modern mass production techniques to the new Highland Park, Michigan plant, which opened in 1910, although it has not introduced the moving assembly line up 'in 1913-1914 model T runabout sold for 575 in 1912, less than the average annual salary in the US when the model T was withdrawn from production in 1927, its price has been reduced to 290 for the coupe , 15 million units were sold, and mass personal Automotive became a reality.
Ford's mass production techniques were quickly adopted by other European manufacturers American automakers are beginning to use until the 1930s, the heaviest costs of capital and sales volume more than this need has ended the era of easy entry and freewheeling competition from other small producers in the US industry, the number of active automakers dropped 253 in 1908 to only 44 in 1929, with about 80 percent of production in the industry represented by Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, formed from Maxwell in 1925 by Walter P Chrysler most of the remaining independent were destroyed in the Great depression, with Nash, Hudson, Studebaker and Packard clinging to collapse in the period after the Second World war.
The Model T was designed to be the car of a farmer who has served the transportation needs of a nation of farmers Its popularity is bound to fade as urbanized and rural regions of the mud with the passage Act the way for federal aid in 1916 and the Federal Highway Act 1921 addition, the model T was virtually unchanged long after it was technologically obsolete model T owners began to trade up to more, faster, smoother riding, the most elegant car based travel demand model T met tended increasingly to fill the 1920s from the used car backlog pile up in dealerships much as the market became saturated.
In 1927, replacement demand for new cars exceeded the request of the owners for the first time and combined multiple car buyers Given the revenue of the day, car manufacturers could no longer count on a turnover of Installments on expanding market had been initiated by the moderately priced car manufacturers in 1916 to compete with the model T, and in 1925 three quarters of all new cars were purchased on time Although some expensive items, such as pianos and sewing machines were sold in time before 1920, it was selling cars temperament during the twenty years that have established buying expensive consumer credit as a habit of the middle class and a pillar of the US economy.
Market saturation has coincided with technological stagnation in the product and production technology, innovation is becoming progressive rather than dramatic fundamental differences between the post-Second World War models from the Model T were place by the end of the 1920 self-starter, closed all -Steel body, high compression engine, hydraulic brakes, synchromesh transmission and low-pressure balloon tires innovations remain the automatic transmission and the construction drop frame are came in 1930 in addition to a few exceptions, the cars were made in the same way in the early 1950s, as they had been in the 1920s.
To meet the challenges of market saturation and technological stagnation, General Motors under the direction of Alfred P Sloan, Jr. In the 1920s and 1930s innovated planned product obsolescence and put a new emphasis on style, illustrated in the largely cosmetic annual model change scheduled triennial major remodeling to coincide with the economy of life and die with annual facelifts face minor between the objective was to make enough dissatisfied consumers to trade and probably a new more expensive model long before the useful life of their current cars finished the Sloan philosophy was that the main purpose of the company was to make money, not only for cars he felt it was only necessary that GM cars are equal in design to the best of our competitors, it was not necessary to carry out design or the risk of unproven experiments Thus engineering was subject to the dictates of designers and GM's cost-cutting accountants became rchetype has a rational society run by a techno.
As Sloanism replaced Fordism as the predominant market strategy in the industry, Ford lost the head of sales in the lucrative field cheap Chevrolet in 1927 and 1928. In 1936, GM claimed 43 percent of the U S market; Ford with 22 percent dropped to third place behind Chrysler with 25 percent Although auto sales have collapsed during the Great Depression, Sloan GM could boast that in no year the company fail to get earnings GM has retained leadership in the industry until 1986 when Ford outpaced profits.
The automotive industry has played a vital role in the production of military vehicles and war materials during World War II During World War II, in addition to turning millions of military vehicles, American automakers have made some sixty fifteen key military elements, most of them unrelated motor vehicle These materials have a total value of 29 billion, a fifth of the nation's war production.
Because the production of vehicles for the civilian market ended in 1942 and the tires and gasoline were severely rationed, automobile travel fell dramatically during the war years, the cars were breastfed by depression long after they were ready to be discarded have been patched up further, ensuring high pent-up demand for new cars at the end of the war.
Big Three Detroit realized Sloanism its illogical conclusion of the post-war models and options proliferated, and all cars of the year became longer and heavier, more powerful, more gadget bedecked more expensive to buy and use, according to the truism that large cars are more profitable to sell than smaller engineering was subject to questionable non functional style aesthetics at the expense of the economy and the security and quality deteriorated in the point that the mid-1960s, American-made cars were delivered to retail buyers with an average of twenty four faults by one, many of them related to security again, higher unit profits Detroit was on gourmet road cruisers fuel were made to the social costs of increased air pollution and a drain on the reduction of rese Global oil dreams.
The era of the road cruiser restyled every year ended with the imposition of federal standards for car safety 1966 the emission of 1965 and 1970, energy consumption in 1975; with escalating gasoline prices following the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979; and in particular with the penetration of mounting the two U S and global markets first by the German Volkswagen bug a modern model T and Japanese fuel efficient, functionally designed, well built small cars.
After peaking at a record 12 to 87 million units in 1978, sales of cars made in America fell to 6 to 95 million in 1982, while imports increased their share of the US market by 17 7 percent 27 9 percent in 1980, Japan became the world's first automotive manufacturer, a position he continues to hold.
In response, the US auto industry in the 1980s suffered a massive organizational restructuring and technological renaissance managerial revolutions and reductions in plant capacity and GM staff, Ford and Chrysler led to leaner, companies tougher with break points, even lower, allowing them to maintain profits with lower volumes of increasingly saturated, competitive market manufacturing quality and motivation programs and employee participation were given priority high industry in 1980 began a period of five years, 80 billion in the plant modernization program and retool functional aerodynamic design style replaced in the studios of Detroit, the annual cosmetic change was abandoned automobiles became smaller, less fuel efficient and more polluting sû r the product and production have been increasingly streamlined in a process of integration of computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing.
The car was a change in twentieth century America key strength During the 1920s, the industry has become the backbone of a new company focused on consumer goods the mid-1920s, it ranked first in value of the product, and in 1982 he provided on every six jobs in the United States in the 1920s, the car has become the lifeblood of the oil industry, a major customer the steel industry, and the largest consumer of many other industrial products technology these ancillary industries, especially steel and oil, have been revolutionized by its demands participation boosted the car in full recreation air and stimulated the growth of tourism and tourism-related industries, such as gas stations, roadside restaurants, motels and the construction of streets and roads, one of the most impor positions sentatives of government spending, peaked when the Interstate Highway Act, 1956 inaugurated the largest public works program in history.
The car ended up rural isolation and the most important urban development, better medical care and schools in rural America while, paradoxically, the tractor has the obsolete traditional family farm The modern city with its industrial suburbs and surrounding residential is a product of the automotive and trucking the automobile changed the architecture of the typical American home, changed the design and composition of the urban district, and released mistresses narrow limits of home from home No other force history has therefore revolutionized the way Americans work, live and play.
In 1980, 87 2 percent of US households owned one or more motor vehicles, 51 5 percent from more than one, and fully 95 percent of domestic car sales were to replace Americans have become really dependent automotive, but if car ownership is almost universal, the motor vehicle no longer functions as a progressive force for change new electronic media forces the laser, the computer and the robot probably foremost among them trace the future period of American history that can appropriately be called the automobile age is melding in a new era of electronics.
The Companion reader of American history Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, copyright 1991 by Editors Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Houghton All rights reserved.
Car Facts & Summary, auto, American auto manufacturers, expensive consumer goods.