An article in the April 10 issue of Wall Street Journal , "China Lets 170 Auto Makers Bloom," says that China has over 170 car manufacturing companies. Though the Chinese government is now urging consolidation in this industry, it had originally encouraged this growth. We take for granted that having only three or four car manufacturers is a reasonable number. And as the winnowing process in China progresses, they may ultimately reach this number. But it will take a lot of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies to get there. And it will also take time---a lot of time---perhaps 90 years, because that's how long it took in the U.S.
You
see, The U.S. also had that many car companies at one time. The American car industry began
in 1894, when Frank Duryea
patented his gas-powered buggy. He
built this thing in Springfield MA.
But when Frank and his brother, Charles, made a serious attempt to mass
produce this machine, they opened a factory in Waterloo, Iowa. They had made
abortive attempts to build gas buggies in both Springfield, MA, and in Illinois. But to cheaply hire large numbers of
machinists who actually knew how to build gas engines, Waterloo was the better
choice. Waterloo already had the
world's first tractor factory, the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Co. (which
was later acquired by Deere & Co.)
This factory opened in 1892, by which time Waterloo had already enjoyed a
thriving gas engine business for over a decade. At that time, Waterloo was to the one-cylinder gas engine
what Silicon Valley is to the chip today.
Toward the end of the 19th century, over a dozen companies built engines
in Waterloo, and eventually, at least 175 different brands were built
there. In 1898, the Duryea Power Company opened in
Waterloo, located on Duryea street. Duryea street is still there, but alas, the
factory closed after selling only 100 cars. The brothers could not agree on a
final design and made continual changes. The investors soon grew weary of their
bickering and withdrew their support.
But Waterloo soon had other car companies, some of which survived till
the great depression. There was
the Maytag, shown above, whose plant manager, Fred
Duesenberg, later produced a luxury car under his own name. And the Wm. Galloway Farm Equipment company built a pickup truck. And the Dart pickup was also built in Waterloo. But by then, car factories were sprouting all over the
country. By 1898, you could buy a Cadillac or an Oldsmobile, and in 1903, the first trans-continental road race was
won by someone driving a Winton. Between 1900 and WWI, almost every town of any size had its
own car company. No one knows just
how many there were, but I'm sure it was over 170. While few of these companies exist today, many survived till the start of the Great
Depression, and some closed their doors only at the start of WWII, when all
auto manufacturing was shut down for the duration of the war.
But
in the 1950's, some of the old pre-war cars were still around. When one of my brothers was in high school, he briefly owned an Essex and later had a Terraplane. And one of his friends had an Auburn, and another friend had a Graham Page. After WWII, there were far fewer car brands, but still
a lot more than the three we have today.
When I was in college in the late 1950's, I drove whatever old, worn out
car I could afford to buy. At a
time in my life when I had not yet owned a Chevy
or a Ford, I had owned two Packards, a Nash, and a Studebaker. ,
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