The Car by Bryan Appleyard
The Car by Bryan Appleyard tells the history and world changing power of the car and the automotive industry. From the turn of the 20th century, when cars first replaced the horse and the outrage that came with it, to the modern era of transitioning from the internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, Appleyard tells the story of how cars changed the world. The invention of the gas powered vehicle is not limited to changing how people travel but Appleyard takes a close look at how the car has had a timeless impact socially, economically and geographically. Everywhere there are cars there are roads fit to support these vehicles. Seen across America is a grid of never ending highways, more than 48 thousand miles worth which totally altered the American landscape. Appleyard tells the story of the car, from the first engines that could hardly putter faster than a brisk walk to the modern strides into electric vehicles and the requisite charging stations that come with them.
Appleyard’s assessment of the car looks at the history of the biggest names in the industry. Special attention is given to American automotives at the turn of the 20th century as well as industry in Japan, two of the most substantial contributors to the vehicular population of the world. By understanding the history of automotive development, including descriptions as to why certain decisions were made and what target audiences responses were, readers are given to understand what shaped the modern landscape of cars. Ideas came and went, with risks either paying off or costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars. The pursuits of engineers and company ownership varied. While the likes of Henry Ford targeted profit and production primarily others selling high end luxury vehicles geared their operations towards creating a unique, spectacular car of high resale value. For both mentalities the goal was to give customers what they desired and inventing what consumers had perhaps not even considered wanting or what any other car manufacturer was providing. While the first internal combustion engine vehicles were in France and Germany, the car has since taken over the world. Wherever there is a populous, there are roads of varying quality and cars to take those who can afford it from one place to another.
Henry Ford – Ford Motor Company
In the 1920s there was no bigger name in automotives than Ford. Henry Ford, founder of the world changing company, was famous for his implementation of the assembly line in pursuit of the quickest assembly of vehicles in his factories. Rather than have the worker go from one part of the factory to the next in order to assemble a car Ford chose to implement the work line which brings the work to the employee. This reduced time employees spent moving from one station to the next and created a highly effective mode of production like nothing the world had seen before. By reducing a single large task -building a car- to many smaller tasks the pace of the building process increased immensely. This ultimately gave the Ford Motor Company an excess of product unrivaled by opponent companies.
By creating mass product Ford created the first mass market for cars. Mass production created potential for accessibility for the somewhat new combustion engine vehicle in America with 15 million Model T cars sold by 1927. First created in 1908, the Model T was the only car produced by the Ford Motor Company until 1927. Henry Ford thought it was the only car anyone in America would ever need. Ford wanted his Model T to be affordable for as many consumers as possible and he actively kept the price of the Model T low. The first Model T cost $825 and by 1927 they cost $360 off the lot. The assembly line process expedited output which created the foundation of a car culture in America which would flourish through the 20th century.
While creating the mass produced Model T was a tremendous breakthrough in increasing the sale of automotives, Henry Ford fundamentally reshaped the workforce. Ford Automotive factories were designed for the work to come to the workers to reduce time spent by employees walking around to machines and jobs. Ford, in 1914, offered employees a $5 wage, unheard of at the time. The pay increase reduced staff turnover tremendously. In 1913 the turnover rate at Ford factories was 370 percent and after the increased wages turnover reduced to 16 per cent by 1915. Ford also introduced the 40-hour work week of 8 hour shifts 5 days per week. This was a breakthrough at a time when 12-hour shifts were the workplace norm across America.
Henry Fords obsession with creating an efficient assembly line and a vehicle that was accessible to American consumers catapulted Ford Motorcars to great success. With his single-minded ambition of creating a car for Americans Ford dawned a new era in American history where citizens could travel at ease in an affordable motor vehicle. It was the ambition of Ford which developed the Model T, a car the average consumer could handle and maintain on their own. He spearheaded an new industry. Ford was not one to embrace change and, as a result, he would later be outmatched by rival companies in America such as General Motors who took a broader look at the car and, standing on the shoulders of what Ford had accomplished, expanded the idea of what a car could be and what a car represented.
With the introduction of 15 million Model Ts through the 20s came demand for viable roads in American cities. The horse and cart days required paths but the fragility of the Model T required roads which were more stable and reliable. With the expansion of roads through cities came further expanses outside cities making America a more accessible country to citizens. The 20 horsepower engine of the Model T may not be much by today’s standards but in the 1920s it was a tremendous leap forward in making travel in America an accessible and affordable venture. As roads and highways continued, and continue, to be constructed across America the landscape of the wide open plains have been defeated by the great concrete evolution that came with the automotive industry.
Taiichi Ohno – Toyota Motor Corporation
Taiichi Ohno inspired a new perspective of vehicle assembly. Lean production, implemented by the Toyota Motor Company, altered the priority of assembly from speed to precision. While Ford’s production lines were effective at attaining a high output of vehicles the priority of fast production left little opportunity for correcting mistakes as they occurred. Taiichi Ohno saw this feature of Ford factories as a flaw wasting workers and workspace which ultimately cost time and money. Ohno and his associates decided that in their Toyota factories corrections of manufacturing errors warranted the entire assembly line being stopped to fix the error rather than waiting for the product to come off and be fixed later. This allowed the source of the problem to be sought and identified in order to prevent the problem from persisting. This assembly process initially increased the time spent on each vehicle manufactured but also increased the quality of vehicles produced. Vehicles at the Ford factory were often sent out of the factory with glaring mistakes in exchange for expediency, Ohno’s system of lean production ensured cars coming out of Toyota factories were mistake free and ready for the road.
Ohno determined the most effective way of turning a strong profit was to slow the process down rather than speed up every step as the Americans manufacturers had. During postwar visits to America Ohno saw the American assembly lines in Detroit. It was clear at the time the manner Ford factories operated was the future of automotive assembly. An engineer for Toyota Motor Company, Ohno was interested but not smitten with the high production American assembly lines. While the American production rate was exponentially greater than that of the auto manufacturers in Japan, he saw that American factories prioritized haste over efficiency.
Upon returning to Japan Ohno decided to implement the Toyota Production System. The TPS was inspired by the Ford assembly line with the inclusion of eastern Zen principles. Three concepts taken from the Zen approach were Muda, which means waste and uselessness, Mura meaning unevenness, and Muri meaning unreasonable or immoderate. The suppression of these three elements was key to fluid operation in the TPS. Another idea, Jidoka, meant workers would stop the work line in the case of an error. Ohno saw how American factories required specific areas and workers to address mistakes made on the assembly line and in some cases these mistakes made their way out of the factory to be discovered by the consumer. In a Ford factory an error on the assembly line led to no inquiry whereas in the TPS an error was traced back to the initial cause. This is where the process of asking ‘why’ five times to every issue was crucial to retracing the steps of production. Rather than simply fixing the error finding the root of the problem prevented similar errors from occurring again, thus enhancing the long-term rate of output with continually less manufacturing errors.
It took approximately 20 years for Ohno and his associates to fully implement the lean production system, but Toyota sales grew, expanding car culture in Japan. With this patient and adaptive approach Japan was able to surpass Detroit in auto manufacturing by 1980. By reducing waste, addressing the root cause of errors, and modifying existing American production habits the Japanese automakers became the paramount car producers in the world. American producers maintained the same habits of Henry Ford which focused on fast paced production. A 1972 survey found that among the Big Three manufacturers in Detroit and American Motors cars were delivered to dealers with an average of 24 defects. No such errors were found among Japanese companies. Today Japanese vehicles are some of the most popular and affordable models sold across the world.
In the infancy of the car industry in the early 20th century there was a series of companies competing to become the car company to be bought from in their respective country. Watching the developments and advancements made by other companies bred competition of creating the most ideal cars for a small market of consumers who could afford one and who lived in an area with driveable roads. As decades passed the car became a staple of every household and completely altered the landscapes of countries which adopted a car culture.
Cars eventually surpassed being an asset and became a sign of class and sophistication. Cars became a piece of humanity, a tool to express freedom and live life more easily and adventurously. Cars became a major factor of social and cultural development across the world. The vehicles in royal and presidential motorcades reflect grace and power. The early 20th century car was defined by the internal combustion engine but the 21st century car will be defined by stepping away from this technology and into a new era of electric vehicles. We will see the same ebb and flow of powerhouse companies taking leaps and bounds, falling short and surpassing expectations as ideas of the modern car continue to change and develop as they did through the 20th century.