The Evolution of Automotives: Part 1: Creative Engineering
Automoblog’s Katie Kapro examines how imaginative thinking and creative risks have influenced the modern automobile in this three-part miniseries.
The 21st Century is an age of automotive loyalists. You can hardly go into a garage without hearing some level of discussion about American cars versus Japanese cars versus German cars. Everyone has a dearest, and if you ask them about it, you’ll get a bullet list of reasons why their choice is superior.
Modest Origins
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were the undoubted champions of quality automobiles. The very first Mercedes-Benz, built in one thousand nine hundred one by German designer Wilhelm Maybach, is credited with being the very first modern motorcar. It had all the right elements: relative lightness, power, and speed. Its thirty five horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower and reached up to fifty three miles per hour. Its only downfall was being enormously expensive to build and in turn, prohibitively expensive to purchase.
By contrast, in one thousand nine hundred one through 1906, the very first American-built Oldsmobile had only three horsepower and sold for $650. As a result of this strain inbetween quality and affordability, all automotive technological developments of the 20th Century focused on making vehicles more attainable for the everyday Joe. Now, just over one hundred years later, cars have substituted horse-drawn carriages, trains, and all other modes of transportation by a fat margin. In 1900, only 8,000 Americans possessed cars; today over two hundred twenty million cars hit the road for the morning commute. If history proves anything, it’s that 20th-Century Americans were very skilled at turning failure into success.
Farm To Freeway
In 1908, Ford introduced the Model T, lovingly called “Tin Lizzie,” and switching the industry and nation for good. Inbetween one thousand nine hundred thirteen and 1927, Ford produced and sold more than fifteen million Model Ts. Tin Lizzie didn’t come out of the blue; Ford paved the way with the Model N and earlier, a motorized, horseless-buggy-of-a-thing called the Model A. These stepping stones gave the company valuable income to support further growth and industrialization.
Once the Model T proved itself to be an affordable purchase for the American common man, it took hold of the collective imagination. The Model T took automobiles from a plaything for the uber rich to a practical lump of machinery that would switch the way the nation runs.
The Model T evolved to have many other functions as related to modern transportation at the time. This one thousand nine hundred twenty five Model T variant, for example, served as a prisoner transport vehicle for law enforcement. Photo: Ford Motor Company.
The Digital Age
From the earliest days, car buffs have never been timid about finding creative solutions to practical problems. Car not rapid enough? The response is nitrous, obviously. Almost anything can be immobilized with a tinker here and a tweak there. Back in the day, lots of Model T owners purchased aftermarket kits to turn their cars into trucks; the kits essentially extended the framework of the car and beefed-up the rear. Voila, truck.
It didn’t take long for the creative thinkers of the era, many of whom were farmers, to take things one step further and adapt their car-trucks into the most practical of all farm machines: the motorized tractor. Reviews of the Tin Lizzy tractor adaptation were mixed at best, but it won over enough farmers who were hoping to save a few bucks that several companies began producing and selling conversion kits.
Very first assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, circa 1913. Photo: Ford Motor Company.
Creative Engineering
The line of thinking that brought us the Model T tractor — unabashed creativity mixed with practical ingenuity — is precisely the attitude that is pushing automobiles to the brink of technological development today. The only way to know if a car can plow a field is to attempt it. And the only way to know if your car engine can be improved upon is to give it a go.
Before the advent of computerized engine control units, vehicles were less efficient in part because it was so much stiffer to measure what was going on under the rubber hood. How do you optimize emissions if your entire system isn’t fine-tuned? It’s worth noting that, in addition to overall efficiency, ECUs optimize spectacle in other ways like fuel economy and responsiveness — none of which would be possible if some car stud (or chick) somewhere hadn’t scraped their head and thought, “hmm, I wonder what would happen if I put a computer in my car?”
The Road Ahead
As we stir forward in time with our vehicles at our sides, history begs just one question: what’s next? While there’s no definitive response, one thing is for certain: the future is only as interesting as we make it.
Katie Kapro spent her childhood handing her dad devices under his Datsun. She loves thinking about the social aspects of motoring, and dreaming about the future of automotives. Go after her work on Twitter: @kapro101
Cover Photo: From the collections of The Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company: The very first transcontinental car race from Fresh York to Seattle was held in one thousand nine hundred nine and Henry Ford’s Model T emerged victorious. The journey took twenty two days and fifty five minutes at an average speed of 7.75 mph.