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From the Craft Method to the Birth of Giants
These early American cars were not factory-built, of course; they were put together by the traditional methods of the artisan.
-Jan P. Norbye, The American Car Since 1775 , 1971
In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, Americans had witnessed the proliferation of electric lights, the advent of the telephone, and the Wright brothers' conquest of flight. In the midst of these historical events, the Curved Dash Oldsmobile that Olds turned to after the fire of 1901 also caught the public's imagination. Within a month of advertising the car with an initial price tag of $600 (the hook was $1 per pound), Olds booked 300 orders, a figure unheard of at the time.
While his new Lansing plant produced engines, Olds set up temporary production in the surviving foundry behind the destroyed Detroit factory. Olds suffered another setback in May, however, when his machinists there went on strike. Fortunately, the Lansing Businessmen's Association had bought a 50-acre fairground on the city's southwest side, intending to give it to Olds if he moved his entire operation to the city. Ransom agreed and in August broke ground for a factory that opened on December 18. Oldsmobile sales soon led the industry, accounting for 425 of the fewer that 5,000 cars sold nationwide in 1902 (accurate statistics for the industry's formative years are difficult to come by). Olds had to find a way to grow production.
Until then, Olds used the Craft Method of production adopted from carriage makers, whose low sales volumes seldom inspired manufacturers to build them faster. In the Craft Method, a group of workmen led by a skilled and knowledgeable craftsman built the automobile at a stationary site. Under the direction of the head craftsman, workers, apprentices, and gofers brought the frame members to a bench or set of sawhorses. There, the frame was assembled and workers attached first the axles and springs, then the wheels. The engine was then brought to the growing car and installed along with the rest of the drivetrain. Finally, the body, which was often built at another building or plant, was brought to the car and fastened in place.
In these early cars, much of the painting was often done as the car was built; as soon as the frame was complete, workers painted it along with the running gear. The body arrived already painted and upholstered, but needed more painting when the car was completely assembled. Each additional coat of paint took upwards of 12 hours to dry.
The Craft Method required a great deal of running back and forth for everyone involved. Often, several workers were dedicated exclusively to retrieving parts and bringing them back to the car being assembled. And because only a few people assembled each car from start to finish, they had to remember every component. Since early cars were simple, this was perhaps not as great a challenge as it would later become. But as cars grew more complex, the chances of forgetting a critical part grew.
It soon become obvious to Olds that he couldn't continue with business as usual if he was to simultaneously rebuild his company and fulfill orders. Instead of bringing parts to a fixed workstation, workers at Olds' Lansing factory began placing chassis on wooden platforms mounted on casters, then pushed the platforms from one workstation to the next. At each stop, workmen attached specific parts, stocked in bins close by. Then the car was pushed on to succeeding stations until complete.
While Olds' "assembly line" was crude at best, he can rightly be called the "Father of Mass Automobile Production." Scientific American in January 1904 trumpeted the Lansing operation as a new trend in automobile manufacturing. Other manufacturers gradually expanded on Olds' breakthrough, culminating in Ford's continuously moving powered assembly line in 1914.
Another essential development in the auto industry around this time was the concept of interchangeable parts. With the Craft Method, workers spent much time hand-fitting parts, often by filing. By that time, gun manufacturers had pioneered precision component manufacturing, but their methods had not been widely adopted in other industries. Consequently, auto parts built by outside suppliers or even elsewhere in the plant seldom fit the car. This was particularly true of pistons and crankshaft bearings, which required very fine tolerances.
Henry Martyn Leland, who had spent 18 years at the Rhode Island gun manufacturer Brown & Sharpe, championed the cause of precision-made interchangeable parts to speed up production and improve quality in the auto industry.
In August 1902, Leland was asked to help liquidate the assets of the Henry Ford Company, but he convinced the company's investors that they had a worthwhile product-especially if it was equipped with the new one-cylinder motor that his company, Leland & Faulconer Manufacturing Company, had developed. The investors agreed and renamed the company Cadillac Motor Company, after Detroit's founder. Cadillac's first car was completed in October 1902. Almost immediately, Leland was drawn into management. In October 1905, Leland & Faulconer merged with Cadillac.
At Cadillac, Leland upheld uncompromising standards of precision machining, insisting that workers be supplied with precision measuring gauges to test each part to the narrowest tolerances in the industry. With interchangeable parts, Cadillacs were made for a fraction of the money and time other carmakers required for their vehicles.
As Cadillac gathered power, Oldsmobile began faltering. In 1904, Olds, following a dispute with his partners, left to form the REO Motor Car Company. Ever-slowing production of the Curved Dash Oldsmobile continued into 1907, when Olds Motor Works shifted to huge, expensive cars that also foundered. Carriage builder William Crapo "Billy" Durant, who purchased Oldsmobile in 1908, would stop the company's decline by incorporating it into his growing General Motors family.
With the exception of Henry Ford, one would be hard pressed to find a more influential figure in automobile history than Durant. He was the co-owner of America's largest carriage-manufacturing company, Flint-based Durant-Dort, which had 14 plants in the United States and Canada and turned out 75,000 carriages and wagons a year. Automobiles hadn't enthralled Durant until 1904, when a Flint doctor named Herbert Hill became the first person in town to buy a car: a Model B Buick. Hill took Durant on a city tour, after which Durant reportedly borrowed or bought the car.
The maker of that car, Buick Motor Company originated in Detroit, where Scottish-born plumber David Dunbar Buick had been bitten by the automotive bug in the mid 1890s. Buick, who had invented the method for cementing enamel to cast iron for bathtubs, sold his business to finance a gasoline-engine company. Although the cars they built bore Buick's name, Buick faded into the background as a series of investors were brought in to finance the shaky start-up. Buick owned just 1 percent of the company by 1903, when Jim Whiting, owner of Flint Wagon Works, bought the automaker and moved its operations to Flint. Whiting soon discovered that he, too, lacked the financial resources to keep the company going and turned to Durant for help.
Durant began raising capital, then moved part of the business to Jackson, Michigan, about 100 miles from Flint. In the summer of 1905, he played both cities against one another by promising to consolidate his operations in whichever city offered capitalization. In September, Flint's four banks, major companies, and hundreds of individuals rallied and bought stock in Buick. Durant secured a license from ALAM and the following year bought a 220-acre farm just north of Flint that soon became home to a complex of auto factories.
Consumers lapped up Buick cars. The company's sales soared to 4,641 units in 1907, doubled to 8,820 in 1907, and nearly quadrupled to 30,525 in 1910. Feeling alienated, David Buick had sold what was by then his less than 1-percent share in the company in 1908. He died broke in 1929.
With the capital earned from Buick sales, Durant went on a buying spree, looking for other automakers and suppliers to add to his empire. Sometime in 1907 or 1908, he decided to create a holding company that he wanted to call United Motors Corporation. Two companies Durant hoped to add to his fold were REO and Ford Motor Company.
In the early 1900s, there was little indication that Ford Motor Company, incorporated June 16, 1903, would revolutionize the industry and automobile production or that Henry Ford would even have much influence over the firm. After all, Ford's previous two automaking ventures had failed.
Like David Buick, Henry Ford needed investors to launch his company, and turned to coal dealer Alexander Y. Malcomson; Malcomson's bookkeeper, James Couzens; and John F. and Horace Dodge. The Dodge brothers supplied engines and transmissions for Ford's operation while simultaneously supplying Olds. Ford Motor Company's first president was not Henry Ford but rather John S. Gray, a candy manufacturer and president of the German-American Bank.
The company set up shop in a wagon plant on Detroit's Mack Avenue. Within a month of incorporation, the first two-cylinder Model A Ford was completed. The 1903 Model A Ford (not to be confused with the 1928 Model A) came in two versions that sold for $850 and $950, respectively. But it was not the inexpensive car that Henry Ford dreamed of. In fact, it was more expensive than the Curved Dash Olds and its two contemporary Cadillacs.
And, unlike in later years, when Ford built nearly every vehicle component, the company was really a car assembler. The powerplants came from the Dodge brothers, and many of the wooden bodies and upholstery came from Detroit's largest carriage maker, the C.R. Wilson Carriage Company. In fact, when Ford Motor Company tried to buy a license from ALAM in July 1903, it was turned down; ALAM decided that Ford was not a real car manufacturer, just an assembler. Rather than halting production, the automaker plunged forward, selling 658 cars by March 1904. ALAM filed suit in October, but the case would take years to wind through the federal courts.
Meanwhile, Ford's operations outgrew the Mack Avenue plant and the company built a three-story wooden factory with a brick facade at the corner of Piquette and Beaubien, at what were then the outskirts of Detroit. Costing $76,500, the Piquette Avenue plant opened in 1904 and was designed like an old New England mill, with an abundance of windows for ventilation and natural lighting. Offices were at the front of the building and a large cargo elevator connected the three levels at the far end. Learning from the 1901 fire that destroyed Olds' Detroit plant, Ford Motor Company outfitted the Piquette plant with an early sprinkler system, two firewalls, and metal fire doors that closed automatically. Ford's Piquette plant stands at the epicenter of automotive history. Not only was it the place where the Model T-the car that changed the definition of mass production-was born, it was also in Detroit's hotbed of automotive production, in close proximity to Cadillac's first plant and Packard's Detroit complex.
Henry Ford wanted to make a simple car for the masses at the Piquette plant, but his partners wanted to build higher-priced models, such as the $2,000 four-cylinder Model B and the $1,000 two-cylinder Model F.
Fortunately for Henry Ford, Malcomson was worried about the ongoing ALAM case and sold his stock to Ford in 1905. When Gray died the following year, Ford became the company's president. Now his own boss, Ford built that simple car: the four-cylinder 1906 Model N that sold for $600. With a lower-priced car, however, Ford knew that he had to double or even triple production to keep up with the anticipated demand.
As was the case throughout most of the industry at the time, Ford's Piquette workers used the Craft Method. A stroke of good fortune came in the form of Ford's brief association with Walter E. Flanders, a sales representative for the J and L Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and an expert in machine design and maintenance. Ford chose him to make his factory more efficient.
Flanders became Ford's works manager in 1906, while keeping his job at J and L. His radical innovation at Ford was essentially a rigorous production schedule. In those days, early auto manufacturers ordered materials ahead of time and built cars in reaction to the orders they received. According to Detroit-based auto historian and author Michael J. Kollins, other industries planned their production, deciding how many units they would produce and negotiating the best possible prices for raw materials and components. Under Flanders' direction, Piquette became more efficient and turned out 14,887 cars for the 1907 model year. By comparison, William Durant's Buick produced only 4,641 units for the same year.
Under Durant, Buick had built a new assembly plant in Flint, which opened in 1905 and boasted nearly 14 acres under one roof. According to an amazed Walter Percy Chrysler, who toured the plant in 1910, the Buick chassis room was a 70x600-foot brick building with a forest of wooden posts, each no more than 20 feet apart, supporting the roof. Each new chassis was assembled and then elaborately sanded and painted using the Craft Method.
Sometime in 1907 or 1908, Durant talked with his friend Benjamin Briscoe, then the owner of the Maxwell-Briscoe Companies, and New York financier J. P. Morgan & Company about creating an auto-manufacturing powerhouse that would meld several successful competitors. Durant wanted to merge with Ford, which was coming under increasing pressure from ALAM and REO Motor Car Company. Talks with both Ford and Olds fell apart, however, when both Henry and Ransom demanded to be bought out for cash instead of stock.
Durant forged ahead, creating the General Motors holding company, which bought Buick's assets and facilities for a large amount of GM stock. Durant then purchased Olds Motor Works, the Oakland Motor Car Company, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company. It was only the beginning of a frenzied series of acquisitions and expansions. In 1909, GM acquired Cadillac, and by 1910 Durant brought nearly two dozen other vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers into the GM fold. Durant also used racing to help promote his cars, which led to his acquaintance with Swiss-born Louis Chevrolet, a famed driver of the period. Durant managed to coax Chevrolet into joining the Buick racing team in 1909.
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Excerpted from THE AMERICAN AUTO FACTORY by BYRON OLSEN AND JOSEPH CABADAS Copyright © 2002 by Byron Olsen and Joseph Cabadas
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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