250 Years of America: A Brief History of the American Automobile

The United States was barely 110 years old when the automotive age began. As Karl Benz demonstrated his spidery three-wheeled buggy powered by an internal combustion engine to bemused onlookers on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim, Germany, on July 3, 1886, he could have scarcely imagined his rickety contraption would be regarded as the ancestor of the 2.5 billion passenger cars built since. America may not have invented the automobile, but it quickly made the automobile its own. Indeed, the U.S. celebrated its 130th birthday leading the world in automobile sales and production.

As America turned 150, automakers around the world were adopting the low-cost mass-production techniques Henry Ford pioneered, and the car was for the first time no longer just a rich man’s toy. Ford’s tough, simple, and cheap Model T changed the way Americans worked, the way they lived, and the way they played. It spawned shopping malls, motels, planned suburbs with affordable housing, well-paid manufacturing jobs, and an emerging middle class eager to enjoy the perks of prosperity.

By the time of the country’s 180th birthday, the masters of the universe cruised Woodward Avenue from Detroit to its suburbs. Americans were spending $65 billion per year-one-fifth of the country’s GDP-on automobiles, and General Motors, which commanded close to 50 percent of the market, had become the first company in history to make a billion-dollar profit.

Henry Ford may have put the world on wheels, but it was GM’s Alfred Sloan who created the modern automotive industry. Ford believed the only reason to buy a new car was when your old one wore out. Sloan’s insight was to turn a need into a want by making successive generations of cars more emotionally desirable. Longest, widest, lowest; sleekest, fastest, coolest; most power, most technology, most capability. The automotive industry today is still powered by Sloanist superlatives.

America’s 190th anniversary passed in a haze of tire smoke and high-octane gas. Both the Ford Mustang, the original pony car, and the Pontiac GTO, the original muscle car, were on their way to their highest-ever sales figures, with Ford eventually retailing more than 607,000 Mustangs during the year, a record that still stands. Over on the West Coast, hot rods had become the glittering, chrome-plated apotheosis of pop culture, celebrated by bands like the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and on TV shows like The Munsters and The Monkees. Oh, and a mid-engine sports car named the Ford GT40 MkII, powered by an engine designed in Dearborn, Michigan, had just humiliated Enzo Ferrari’s screaming V-12 scarlet racers at Le Mans.

By the time the U.S. celebrated its bicentennial, the glory days of the American auto industry seemed to be over. After all, the country’s bestselling car in 1976 was the cheesy and technically moribund Oldsmobile Cutlass. But while America’s automakers have often struggled since then, making poor products and poor decisions that led to mergers and ultimately bankruptcies, that is to sell it short.

As the U.S. turned 220, Americans could drive the most technically advanced car in the world. The electric-powered GM EV1 went further on less energy than any previous production car ever built, thanks to bleeding-edge engineering and design that focused on light weight, low drag, and high efficiency. It previewed technologies and concepts such as by-wire acceleration and regenerative braking, electro-hydraulic power steering, tire pressure sensing, a heat-pump HVAC system, and inductive charging that would not become commonplace until the second decade of the 21st century.

When fireworks lit up the sky to mark its 240th birthday, America was building the car that kickstarted the modern EV era, the Tesla Model S. Designed and engineered entirely in the U.S., the Model S delivered range and performance unheard of from any electric vehicle that came before. It remains a benchmark against which the majority of the 20 million-plus EVs now sold around the world are judged.

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the emergence of autonomous vehicles promises the biggest disruption to automaking since Sloanism overtook Fordism. But the automotive age is far from over. The car might be changing, but America’s love affair with the freedom and mobility it gives ordinary citizens remains as strong as ever.