Automobility

Automobility refers to the economic, social, and spatial impacts of the automobile. From its modest roots as a “horseless carriage,” a plaything for affluent Europeans, the automobile emerged to become arguably the defining technology of the 20th century. Automobiles encapsulated the era's infatuation with speed and power, epitomized mass mobility, reworked cities and rural areas alike, transformed the lives of millions, if not billions, and dramatically reconfigured the structure and meanings of individual and social time and space.

The origins of the automobile lay in Europe, particularly France (hence the numerous French terms, e.g., chassis, chauffeur). In 1884, Karl Benz [Page 172]built the first self-propelled vehicle in Germany. Early automobiles were fitted with solid rubber tires, which made transport slow and uncomfortable, until 1888, when John Dunlop invented the air-filled pneumatic tire, which absorbed shocks. The mass production and mass consumption of cars, however, was a distinctively American phenomenon. Henry Ford's introduction of the moving assembly line at the Highland Park factory near Detroit in 1913 initiated a vast revolution in the world of work and production, taking mass production to new heights of productivity and profitability. By pioneering a form of production centered on vertically integrated firms and enormous economies of scale, Ford developed an entire ensemble that became the model for most forms of manufacturing throughout much of the 20th century. (A similar system was adopted by Alfred Sloan of General Motors, who also introduced planned obsolescence.) The process worked spectacularly, generating millions of jobs and relatively high wages (and unions) and raising standards of living.

It was in the United States that the automobile, like the bicycle, first came into widespread use, democratizing access to transportation to an unprecedented degree. In 1895, only four automobiles were registered in the entire country, although this number grew to 8,000 by 1900 and to 458,000 by 1910. The automobile soon displaced rail as the dominant intercity carrier of goods and people. What Ford called the “family horse” evolved into the Model T, the first automobile to gain mass acceptance, whose price dropped in half between 1913 and 1916, initiating a privatization of transportation unparalleled in history.

Sharp gender differences characterized early automobile ownership: Driving was an exclusively male phenomenon, and women took to the road in large numbers only after World War II. The invention of the electric starter in 1912 helped bring a few women into the automobile market, but they remained the exception.

Although most urbanites still used light rail transit in the 1920s, it was not long before the private car was no longer a luxury but a necessity for the middle class. Spurred by Henry Ford's Model T, mass ownership of automobiles in the United States grew stupendously. Whereas the Model T cruised at 30 kilometers per hour, by the 1930s, improvements in engines and chassis and the introduction of leaded gasoline doubled this speed. Farmers turned to cars because of their ability to negotiate unpaved roads and urbanites because of the convenience they offered. Within two generations, almost universal availability of motor transportation became the norm. In the United States, the number of registered automobile owners rose from 1 million in 1912 to 10 million in 1921, 30 million in 1937, and 60 million in 1955. The American experience was quickly emulated by Canada and several Western European countries. However, no European country attained the high levels of U.S. auto ownership, in part due to lower incomes, better mass transit systems, and higher gasoline taxes. European cities, in consequence, assumed a very different form from the sprawling, low-density, multinucleated model prevalent in North America.

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