Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry

11. From a National Market . . .

✺ Robert and Helen Lynd observed during the 1920s that the motor vehicle had become an accepted essential of normal living in the United States. It served as the primary focal point of urban family life and made leisure activity a customary aspect of everyday experience. Business people considered ownership of a luxury vehicle as a symbol of wealth, while working-class people saw ownership of any vehicle as a great symbol of advancement. When the Lynds wrote Middletown, the United States was nearing an important milestone: there were almost as many motor vehicles as households . Universal access to motor vehicles had become one of the most important elements defining the American nationality. With a level of dependency on motor vehicles far higher than that of any other country, the United States developed a distinctive landscape of cities and countryside that looked like nowhere else on Earth. The world had about 20 million motor vehicles during the 1920s, and Americans owned about 17 million of them. American companies produced most of the world’s motor vehicles, and they did so in American assembly plants, using American-made parts, put together by American workers. The United States lost its global dominance in motor vehicle ownership , production, and sales during the second half of the twentieth century . As recently as 1950 the United States possessed 60 percent of the world’s 80 million motor vehicles and accounted for 80 percent of the world’s production of 10 million vehicles. In 2000 the United States possessed only 30 percent of the world’s 700 million vehicles and accounted for only 20 percent of the world’s production of 56 million vehicles. Japan 307 “We’d rather do without clothes than give up the car.” “I’ll go without food before I’ll see us give up the car.” —Citizens of Middletown, interviewed by Robert and Helen Lynd, 1920s 11 From a National Market . . . and many European countries had a rate of motor vehicle ownership comparable to that of the United States. Still, the United States achieved another milestone during the 1990s when it became the only major country to have more motor vehicles than licensed drivers. The United States as the First “Car Culture” Three elements defined the distinctive national market for motor vehicles in the United States during the twentieth century: practicality, convenience , and status. The motor vehicle proved to be more practical than other forms of transport for moving people and goods in America’s rural and urban areas. Motor vehicle travel became more convenient because roads were built to accommodate motor vehicles, while other forms of transport were allowed to wither. And owning and operating a motor vehicle became a matter of high social status in American culture. Practicality In 1900 the streets of U.S. cities were congested with horses and horsedrawn vehicles, and teeming throngs of humanity jostled on sidewalks. Surrounding rural areas were sprinkled with isolated farms, cut off from the economic and cultural opportunities of the cities. Rapid diffusion of motor vehicle ownership during the first half of the twentieth century alleviated congestion in U.S. cities and ended rural isolation. In 1900 a motor vehicle, compared to a horse, was regarded with disdain by many rural residents. A motor vehicle was noisy, dirty, unreliable, and expensive to operate, a toy for the idle rich, whereas a horse was a member of the family. Rural residents became convinced of the need to buy a motor vehicle when they came to see it as a means of reaching town to deliver their produce, buy needed supplies, and find entertainment. During hard times the motor vehicle enabled farmers to migrate to the cities, and during desperate times to migrate from the Dust Bowl to California. In the late nineteenth century the railroad made possible rapid movement between major cities, but few rural residents benefited because trains stopped infrequently. The handful of small-town stations where the trains did stop were like pearls strung along the railroad line. Around the stations economic and social activity bustled. It cost a farmer as much to carry wheat 10 miles from the farm to the small-town station by horsedrawn wagon as it did for the railroad to ship it more than 1,000 miles to New York. High shipping costs made growing wheat more than 20 miles Selling Motor Vehicles ✺ 308 From a National Market . . . from a station uneconomical. Dairy...