You can tell a lot about the past if you look at the styling of the objects made. The styling of American automobiles is a good example. Automobile designs reflect the mode and culture of the different eras they were designed in. For example, the rounded bodies of 1940s cars were a deliberate rejection of the antiquated angular designs of the 1930s cars; the elevated tail fins of the 1950s cars reflected America’s fascination with aircraft and space travel; and the beefy muscle cars of the 1960s illustrated the passion that car buyers were developing for raw performance. With help from Hoffman Automotive of Hagerstown, a local Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram dealer in Hagerstown, MD, we survey a few interesting examples of cars that really represent the feelings of the times.
1948 Tucker – In the 1930s, cars were becoming faster and more powerful, and this led to more people were being hurt and killed in car accidents. Detroit’s car makers did little to make their vehicles safer because, frankly, there weren’t federal regulations and car buyers weren’t demanding it. Then in the early ’40s, a forward-thinking automotive designer named Preston Tucker decided that he could build “a safer car” and had a hunch that it was what car buyers wanted.
In 1945, Tucker founded Tucker Motors to make his safety cars. The first step was to secure funding, and he used some rather creative techniques to do so. For example, he sold dealerships to those who wanted to carry the Tucker line, and it came with promises of tremendous profits. After monitoring this interesting sales technique for a while, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) jumped in and shut Tucker down in 1948. The result was that Tucker built just 51 cars before the company went silent.
One of the first major products to be manufactured via assembly line was the automobile. What many people don’t know, though, is that the assembly line did far more than speed up the production of just cars – it also created the concept of parts uniformity and interchangeability. These concepts improved the efficiency of assembly of thousands of consumer products and established the United States as the preeminent source of consumer and industrial goods during the 21st century. Let’s go back to the beginning.
The first transmissions were manual. This required the driver to shift between gears so that a vehicle can be speeded up or slowed down while the engine rotated within an optimum speed range. For many decades, manual transmissions were tricky to drive but good enough for most drivers. Some just never liked the coordinated shifting and clutching procedure involved, though. The car manufacturers were quite cognizant of this issue, and as a result, many were privately experimenting with self-shifting transmissions during the 1930s.
Unless you’re an automobile historian, you’ve probably never heard about Charles Kettering. You do know some of his inventions, though. He was the guy behind such things as the automotive ignition systems, starter motors and even Freon gas. He was also the founder of DELCO Corporation, a well-known automotive parts manufacturer now owned by General Motors.
Heard about the Volkswagen diesel scandal? If not, here’s the short course: Volkswagen recently got involved in a high-profile scandal when it was discovered that they had modified the software in their diesel-powered cars to meet emission requirements. This was an embarrassing event for Volkswagen, but as it turns out, it’s just the latest in the odd history of the diesel engine. Here’s the story.
