Story of the automobile: Its history and development from 1760 to 1917 / With an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industry

by H. L. Barber

Gasoline Car in Popular Demand.

Pioneers in manufacturing gasoline cars during the period beginning at the time—1898—when the first gasoline car, a Winton, was sold, were Clarke Bros., makers of the Auto-car, E. R. Thomas whose name the Thomas Flier took, Stearns, Chalmers, Jeffery, Wilkinson, who designed the Franklin car, Olds who changed from steam to gasoline, Brush, Ford, Leland who produced the Cadillac, Haynes and Apperson. Many familiar cars came into the field later, or were developed and advertised by men who became identified with them at a later date. Although its manufacture was started in 1903, the Overland car, which ranks second to Ford in quantity production, did not become the factor in the industry it is today until John North Willys, a salesman, became identified with it and gave it its remarkable vogue through his personality and spectacular salesmanship.

The gasoline car was struggling to perfection when the electric and steam types of cars were reasonably well established on the market.

In 1896, New England saw its first motor race of electric cars. The names of make or makers of electric cars familiar from that date on include those of Riker, Pope, Waverley, Baker, Woods, Barrows, Studebaker, whose first cars were electric, Columbus Buggy, Rauch & Lang, Detroit, Ohio and Anderson.

But the electric car industry never has reached the proportions of the gasoline car industry. It has never advertised in the lavish manner adopted by gasoline car makers. It has not entered races to the extent its gasoline competitors have. It adopted conservative methods which have given it a slow growth. It is only within the last five years that shaft drives have been perfected in electric car construction, while producing controllers that would not arc, whatever the provocation, have been matters of slow evolution.

But that the electric car is a perfectly balanced piece of mechanism and the one type of the automobile with the least fits and starts, is conceded, and this superiority will doubtless enable the electric type to make up in the future in the motor truck field what it has lost to the gasoline type in the passenger field.

If the passenger automobile has not reached the length of its use and consumption, and it unquestionably has not, what shall be said of the freight automobile, the industry in which is yet in embryo?

The greatest future field for the automobile is without doubt in this direction, as is evidenced by numberless indications.

The increase in motor trucks made in 1916 over 1915 was within less than 8,000 of being double the number of the previous year. The number produced in 1916 was 92,130, against 50,369 in 1915, with an increase in retail value of $40,000,000. A business that nearly doubles in product while showing an increase in total sales of only 33¹⁄₃ per cent, as the automobile truck business does, is seen by analysis to be getting the price of its units down, and that is the surest means in commercial production to insure increased consumption.

Perfected devices are operating in the motor truck field as they did in the passenger car field to lower cost, and the lower the cost of motor trucks is gotten down, the more people will buy them.

The field of the motor truck’s usefulness is ever widening. The European war has demonstrated many directions in which it can be utilized, while its adaptation to the country is as feasible and economical as its adoption by the city. Its use by national, state and city governmental departments is growing rapidly, and the best evidence exists of its superior economy to the horse for many purposes. And when the high wave of motor truck use rolls in, the electric type will be found riding on its crest. Already there are upwards of 50,000 electric trucks alone in use.

The electric passenger car, while far behind the gasoline car in the race of automobiles, is distinctly in the lead of the steam type. Never was the biblical saying, “and the first shall be last,” truer than of the steam automobile. First to arrive at the starting line, it was distanced early in the quarter stretch. The first steam car in the United States was sold in 1889, the first electric in 1892 and the first gasoline in 1898. And though it had a start over the gasoline car of nine years, it was never able seriously to compete with it, and 1905 saw only one large manufacturer left in the steam car industry.

At one time, about 1900, it looked as though steam and gasoline cars were running neck and neck in popular favor, and the names of Riker, White, C. E. Whitney and Stanley were as well known almost as those of Ford, Chalmers and a score of gasoline car makers are known today, but the contest was a short one.

The gasoline car forged ahead. Its success discouraged the steam car makers, most of whom changed from steam car to gasoline car manufacturing, and the business of steam car making narrowed down to two manufacturers—Stanley and White. Finally, in 1911, White gave up making steam cars and devoted his facilities to gasoline cars only, leaving Stanley to share only with Doble in the steam field.

The reason why the car buying public gave enthusiastic patronage to gasoline cars and scant encouragement to steam cars was that the use of the steam car requires more mechanical knowledge than does that of the gasoline car, and the work of making repairs is more complicated. The man of today wants to do a thing in the easiest way. His education, through the conveniences supplied in modern life, is all along the line of short cuts to anywhere and anything. “Why work when you don’t have to,” is his motto, and he has never been able to see why he should take the time to become a proficient mechanic to give himself pleasure, when he can buy a gasoline car and escape doing so—and much work in running his car and repairing it, as well.

The steam automobile reached the zenith of its vogue prior to 1905. Beginning with that year, its use declined and that of gasoline cars increased. The gasoline type is now almost universal in passenger automobiles, and the fact that the power units in the operation of the gasoline motor are more economical than either electricity or steam, has its bearing on their general popularity.