In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

e s s a y o n s o u r c e s When it comes to historical sources, auto repair is everywhere and nowhere. Auto mechanics and repair shops existed in virtually every community across America, but there remains no conventional cache of business or labor records from which to work. The occupation’s social status had repercussions here as well. Auto mechanics and repair shops did not often keep sufficient business or personal records. Even if they had, few archives or libraries sought them out. Labor organizations such as the International Association of Machinists gained only a tiny foothold in the industry, so their records shed limited light on mechanics ’ experience. Therefore, researchers studying this topic must tap a wide range of sources. I will attempt here to draw the interested researcher’s attention to some of the sources I found fruitful as well as a few promising ones that I had to leave untapped. Additional sources and greater detail are provided in the chapter notes. Scholarship on the automobile manufacturing industry abounds and must be mastered prior to delving into the automobile repair industry. Thankfully, Michael Berger has made this task much easier with publication of The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001). Berger’s masterful bibliographic guide makes a reiteration of the major automotive history scholarship here unnecessary. He does not highlight scholarly studies focused on the automobile service industry, however, because they are so few. James J. Flink’s classic work America Adopts the Automobile, 1895– 1910 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970) devoted one subchapter to the subject of maintenance and repair as well as one to “mechanical expertise.” Henry Dominguez published numerous photographs of early Ford agencies in The Ford Agency: A Pictorial History (Osceola, Wis.: Motorbooks International, 1980). Douglas Harper, Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop (Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), while not a historical study, presents an insightful ethnography of a contemporary automobile mechanic that highlights important and enduring qualities of mechanics’ knowledge and social relationships . Thomas S. Dicke, Franchising in America: The Development of a Business Method, 1840–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), contains chapters on the Ford Motor Co. and Sun Oil Co. that touch on service from the perspective of marketing new products. John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, The Gas Station in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); and John Margolies, Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), both touch on, but do not delve into, the repair services offered by gas stations. Joseph Corn drew attention specifically to auto repair in his 1992 article, “Work and Vehicles: A Comment and a Note,” in The Car and the City: The Automobile , the Built Environment, and Daily Urban Life, ed. Martin Wachs and Margaret Crawford (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 25–34. Corn rightly suggested that scholarly historical attention to the work done on automobiles might prove insightful and fruitful because the relationship between motorists and mechanics has long been “one of the most psychologically charged relationships of modern consumer societies.” Finally, in 1995 Stephen McIntyre completed the first sustained scholarly study of the topic in “‘The Repairman Will Gyp You’: Mechanics, Managers, and Customers in the Automobile Repair Industry, 1896–1940” (Ph.D. diss. University of Missouri, Columbia, 1995). McIntyre staked out the contours of the auto repair industry over the first half of the twentieth century and focused a labor historian’s eye on the perennial discontent motorists felt with the automobile service industry, locating its source in class-based conflicts, both between mechanics and managers and between motorists and mechanics. McIntyre’s research, a portion of which appeared as “The Failure of Fordism: Reform in the Automobile Repair Industry, 1913–1940,” Technology and Culture 41 (April 2000): 269–99, proved foundational for the present study and should be consulted by anyone embarking on further research in this area. Valuable nonhistorical studies of auto mechanics in later years include Jim L. Drost, “Job Characteristics of Automotive Mechanics in Selected Iowa Dealerships and Garages” (Ph.D. diss., Iowa State University, Ames, 1970); and Bonalyn J. Nelson, “The Nature and Implications of Technological Change and the Rise of a Service Economy: Observations from the Field of Automotive Repair” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1998). The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich., holds a range of...

Share