page_title: Economy car
section_title: 1886-1920
hierarchical_section_title: Economy car / History / 1886-1920
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry Ford with Model T, Hotel Iroquois, Buffalo NY 1921
context_page_description: Economy car is a term mostly used in the United States for cars designed for low-cost purchase and operation. Typical economy cars are small, lightweight, and inexpensive to buy. Economy car designers are forced by stringent design constraints to be inventive. Many innovations in automobile design were originally developed for economy cars, such as the Ford Model T and the Austin Mini. The alternative approach, other than innovating to build a low-cost car, is to build a stripped-down, no-frills version of a conventional car.
  Gordon Murray, the Formula 1 and McLaren F1 designer, said when designing his new Murray T.25 city car: "I would say that building a car to sell for six thousand pounds and designing that for a high-volume production, where you have all the quality issues under control, is a hundred times more difficult than designing a McLaren F1, or even a racing car. It is certainly the biggest challenge I've ever had from a design point of view."
context_section_description: The History of the automobile after many experimental models dating back at least a hundred years, started with the first production car - the 1886 Benz Tricycle. This began a period that was later known as the Brass era which is considered to be from 1890 to 1918 in the U.S. In the UK this is split into the pre 1905 Veteran era and Edwardian era to 1918. The U.S. Veteran era is pre-1890.
  In the 1890s and into the first decade of the twentieth century; the motorized vehicle was considered a replacement for the carriages of the rich, or simply a dangerous toy, that annoyed and inconvenienced the general public. The period children's book Wind in the Willows, pokes fun at early privileged motorists. The Automotive industry in France were the world leaders during this period. The Red Flag Act had obstructed automotive development in the UK until it was mostly repealed in 1896. The high wheeler was an early car body style virtually unique to the United States. It was typified by large-diameter slender wheels, frequently with solid tires, to provide ample ground clearance on the primitive roads in much of the country at the turn of the 20th century. For the same reason, it usually had a wider track than normal automobiles.
  The first car to be marketed to the (well off but not rich) ordinary person and so the first 'economy car', was the 1901–1907 Oldsmobile Curved Dash - it was produced by the thousands, with over 19,000 built in all. It was inspired by the buckboard type horse and buggy, (used like a small two-seat pickup truck) popular in rural areas of the U.S. It had two seats, but was less versatile than the vehicle that inspired it. It was produced after a fire at the Oldsmobile plant, when the prototype was saved by a nightwatchman named Stebbins, (who later became the Mayor of Detroit), and was the only product available to the company to produce, to get back on their feet.
  Although cars were becoming more affordable before it was launched, the 1908–1927 Ford Model T is considered to be the first true economy car, because the very few previous vehicles at the bottom of the market were 'horseless carriages' rather than practical cars. The major manufacturers at the time had little interest in low-priced models. The first 'real' cars had featured the FR layout first used by the French car maker Panhard and so did the Model T.
  Henry Ford declared at the launch of the vehicle -
  I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one - and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.
  The Ford Model T was a large scale mass-produced car; that very innovation, along with the attributes it required a simple inexpensive design, that allowed it to be the first car to exemplify the ideals of the economy car. Although it followed the Panhard mechanical layout, it used an epicyclic gearbox more like later automatic gearboxes, rather than the Panhard type manual gearbox, which in a developed form is still in common use today. The innovations involved in making it a successful design were in its production and materials technology; particularly the use of new vanadium steel alloys. Model T production was the leading example of the Taylorism school of scientific management, (also known as Fordism), and its production techniques evolved at the Highland Park Ford Plant that opened in 1910, after it outgrew the Piquette Avenue Plant. The River Rouge Plant which opened in 1919, was the most technologically advanced in the world, raw materials entered at one end and finished cars emerged from the other. The innovation of the moving assembly line, was inspired by the 'dis-assembly' plants of the Chicago meat packing industry, reduced production time from twelve and a half hours, to just an hour an
caption: Henry Ford with Model T, 1921
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