Automaker

“ It is equaled only by the internal combustion gas engine, which is a factor in making it practical and efficient.
Gasoline-propelled vehicles have become one of man’s greatest aids in business efficiency, but nevertheless it is very important that we consider the facts, that the adoption of the automobile by man for business, commerce and pleasure is on a very large scale, and that the production by manufacturers is so great that very little thought is given to proper care, which is an ever-present factor in economical operation and a fair return for the investment. ”

“ But that's not to say we should leave the industry to face the transition costs on its own. Yes, we should raise fuel economy standards by 3% a year over the next fifteen years, starting in 2008. With the technology they already have, this should be an achievable goal for automakers. But we can help them get there.
Right now, one of the biggest costs facing auto manufacturers isn't the cars they make, it's the health care they provide. Health care costs make up $1,500 of the price of every GM car that's made - more than the cost of steel. ”

“ And if anybody had an idea that the profits from producing petroleum might be limited by the use of gas and electric light, it was because the automobile’s enormous consumption of gasoline and the use of oil by ships could not be foreseen.
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The field for investment is kept constantly fallow, and ready for the seed that is to fructify into great profits, by the human brain which is ever active—ever thinking. If its product is not an elemental, it is a supplementary idea, as the rubber tire, the demountable rim and the self-starter for automobiles. ”

“ A satisfied customer, the best advertisement, finds expression in the loyal recommendation an owner gives his own make of car; enthusiasm of maker, of salesman, of owner—it runs along the line, and if advertising is the gasoline which makes the car go, enthusiasm is the oil which keeps the bearings of the industry lubricated.
The year 1898 saw the first real attempts of manufacturers in the United States, either of gasoline, electric or steam cars, to make them in any quantity. ”

“ And in the early days of the automobile’s struggles for recognition as a promising investment, no banker or other moneyed man could be brought to believe that it held out any reasonable hopes of great gain. No one could foresee, not even the inventors of the automobile, that in less than two decades the business done through its comparative perfection would rank fourth in order of the industries of the United States. ”

“ The largest rooms of wholly automatic machinery were equipped, so that a large amount of crude steel wires, rods, etc., practically go into a factory at one end and come out at the other, fully machined and ready to go into the assembly of a machine. Cylinder boring, all with one operation, takes the place of operations that required many hours. Progressive types44 of assembly of the finished components of the cars make factories look like the “last words in manufacturing.” ”

“ The taunt of unreliability once levelled—and with justice—at the motor-car, is fast losing its force, owing to the vast improvements in design and details which manufacturers have been stimulated to make. The motor-car industry has a great future before it, and the prizes therein are such as to tempt both inventor and engineer. Every week scores of patents are granted for devices which aim at the perfection of some part of a car, its tyres, its wheels, or its engines. ”

“ For automobile enterprises that took the wrong road and got mired in the mud of mechanical and management difficulties and financial complications were, most of them, lifted out of the slough by men who knew the right road and were better drivers. Had the automobile developed mechanically to near-perfection a score of years before it did, not only would the people as a mass not have been ready for it, but it is doubtful if business at that period had developed to the point of efficiency where it could recognize the possibilities latent in the motor car as a money-making machine. ”

“ But for the manufacturers’ quick recognition that the future of the automobile did not rest with the rich, that to be a great money-making industry, they must make automobiles for the mass and not for the class, the business would probably today be no further advanced than it was fifteen years ago. ”

“ It was quite natural that when the rubber cushion and pneumatic tires rounded the pleasure of easy and noiseless riding in vehicles that Motor vehicles should be revived and improved. So we have the Automobiles in great variety. Invention has been and is still being greatly exercised as to the best motive [Pg 436] power, in the adaption of electric motors, oil and gasoline or vapour engines, springs and air pumps, in attempts to reduce the number of complicated parts, and to render less strenuous the mental and muscular strain of the operator. ”

“ He is best known as an inventor in connection with the automobile industry. Among his inventions are a shaft drive and a beveled gear drive which are now universally used. He originated the idea of placing the operating lever on the steering post and made the first moderate priced automobile in France. He is now the engineer and manager of one of the biggest factories in the world. ”

“ Immutable laws work in the automobile industry. The maker daily takes a course in the University of Production, because an army of selling factors constantly is attending to the absorption facilities of the country’s markets and he rarely permits himself the task of figuring on the “probable saturation point.” It is a wonderfully important thing to the maker that the national Organization gets official reports, guides the policies of standardization, holds an indefinable influence over the engineers30 of the industry, and sits as the congress of the Republic of Motor Car Production. ”

“ To the thinker, one of the most interesting features of the automobile industry is this example it has given to the world of efficiency and co-operation. We are not surprised at efficiency in the steel business or the oil business, because they are industries conducted practically by one man power ”

“ But now, 60 years later, we find that auto-makers have wiped out all differences and are making all cars alike. No matter which company made the car you are driving today, you have nothing to brag about. Today's cars all have at least four things in common- -they are too big, too powerful, too costly and burn too much gasoline.
But it hasn't always been that way. About the same year we bought our Reo, a neighbor family of ours had a flat tire. They set the emergency brake while they jacked up the car to put the spare on. ”

“ The seventeen years in which the industry made its record, saw the rise and the fall of the steamer type of car, the wresting of an Old Man108 of the Sea, in the form of a discouraging patent holder from the shoulders of the manufacturers, the electric car largely depopularized and the gasoline car established in wellnigh universal favor. ”

“ This principle is the very foundation today of all American large-scale production. The manufacturer produces separately thousands of copies of every part of a complicated machine, confident that an equal number of the complete machine will be assembled and set in motion. The owner of a motor car, a reaper, a tractor, or a sewing machine, orders, perhaps by telegraph or telephone, a broken or lost part, taking it for granted that the new part can be fitted easily and precisely into the place of the old. ”

“ I wished to get the manufacture of the engine revived, but to retain the business in my own hands, to carry it on myself in my own name, with the view of gaining for the engine a reputation that would enable me to command the capital necessary to establish its manufacture in works that I had long before planned for that purpose, and in which I could devote myself to the development and building up of the business ”

“ When she has the car ready, supplied with gasoline, lubricating oil, water for the radiator, and all the other things which make for safety and successful operation, and has cranked the engine, unless there is a self-starter, then, with hands and feet engaging the steering wheel, levers, and pedals, the momentous hour has come when the machine is to be under her control. ”

“ The introduction of the motor car in transforming conditions and producing wonderful changes is characteristic of this pushing age. Time is money. The motor has demonstrated its value, and dominates the field of all far-reaching enterprise. Business men recognize its tremendous possibilities and advantageous help in saving time and abridging distance. It spells efficiency in commercial life and men strain a point to bring themselves up alongside their pushing and wideawake neighbors in availing themselves of this great modern aid to the completest equipment. ”

“ In that way they are able to admit that the war has been a great48 blessing to the motor truck feature of the industry. “All a part of the great scheme of economics that makes for the approach of the complete automobilization of the country,” is the way one manufacturer puts it.
The automobile industry is set—it is fourth in importance in the United States. It will handle itself, so to speak. The makers know they must give value for every car and truck they build, and the people have become ready to continue in the industry every maker who plays the industry as it should be—not as a “game.” ”

“ Many of our major industries, such as steel, glass, rubber, and textiles, rely on the auto industry to buy a significant percentage of their output. It is estimated that at least one in five jobs in the United States depends, directly or indirectly, on the automobile industry. ”

“ A few years ago we used only fifty thousand yards a year; now we absorb ten million yards, worth seven and one-half millions of dollars.
Now take machinery, and you find that the automobile business has created a whole new phase of this time-tried industry. In many motor-cars there are three thousand parts. In view of the extraordinary demand for cars, the machinery to produce them must be both swift and accurate. The old standard tools and engine lathes were inadequate to perform the service. The automobile-makers had to have new machinery, and have it in a hurry. ”

“ He had measured the power of his steel to withstand shock, he had calculated the efficiency of his motor to stand its daily tasks on a strenuous36 schedule, he had learned of the troubles of his rivals and he had spent his money liberally, at the direction of his engineering department, to make a car that would do anything a less skillful driver than a national tour pilot could ask of the machine. ”

“ The volume of business is so large, and the interests concerned so wide, that the manufacturers have their own organization, called the Motor and Accessory Manufacturers. It includes one hundred and eighty makers, whose capitalization is three hundred millions, and whose investment is more than half a billion dollars.
There still remain to be discussed two phases of the automobile which have tremendous significance for the future of the industry—its commercial adaptability and its relation with the farmer and the farm. ”

“ Moreover, the automobile illustrates more completely than any other industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our industrial progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and the use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other manufacturers adapted these principles to making the automobile that the American motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions. ”

“ The A. E. F.—and this is news to many of its members—has, right here in France, a fully equipped automobile factory which is able not only to rebuild from the ground up any of a dozen or more makes of motors, but to turn out parts, tools, anything required from the vast stores of raw materials which has been shipped overseas for the purpose, with the special machinery which has been torn up in the States and replanted here. The factory is going to employ thousands of expert mechanics, and is going to have a capacity for general repair work unequalled by any similar plant back home. ”

“ The industry is like a science. The engineer has brought standardization to almost finality, the matter of styles and body designs is an exact science, the tire companies have been keen rivals but beneath their terrific competition they have permitted the stream of co-operation in tire standardization to run smoothly, and the manufacturer has spent his money wisely in equipping his plant with plenty of large-quantity31 type of machinery and increased his plant to enable him to handle the large production. ”

“ Down one side of the gallery the [139] machines are engaged in cutting gears with so much precision that, when tested by turning them together on pins on a bench at the end of the gallery, it is very rare indeed that any one of them is found defective. This installation of automatic tools is one of the largest of its kind in a motor-car works, if not in any engineering shop, and each one has been carefully selected in view of its efficiency for particular classes of work, so that we see machines from America, England, France, and Germany. ”

“ Ten years ago, the parts were all turned out in the ordinary forge and machine-shops; to-day there are six hundred manufacturers of parts and accessories, and their investment, including plants, is more than a billion dollars. They employ a quarter of a million people.
No one was more surprised at the growth of the automobile business than the parts-makers themselves. A leading Detroit manufacturer summed it up to me as follows:
"Ten years ago I was in the machine-shop business, making gas engines. Along came the demand for automobile parts. ”