Is there a list or something that lists important mass produced cars that came after the Ford Model T? I can find links about the development of car engines themselves, links about Ford’s history, but I want to see what cars were made right after Model T, especially non-Ford ones.
Well, obviously the Model A, for one.
Almost all of the mass produced cars came after the Model T.
This Wikipedia article on the evolution of cars is a pretty good start to identify some significant milestones in car development.
I know I have a great book at home that covers the evolution of automobile technology through roughly the 1980s or early 1990s. Unfortunately, I can’t remember its name. I could try to dig it up.
If you look at car production figures by year, once the Model T was introduced Ford was leading the US car market until production stopped in 1927. But the introduction of the assembly line in 1913 gave Ford domination, and the production figures are startling.
The biggest competitors in the teens and 20’s were Chevy, Buick, and Dodge, but at one fifth the number of Fords. Looking at those brands would probably be the place to start, but I can’t find detailed sales figures online. Ford plants in other countries adopted Ransom Olds’ (he invented it, not Ford) moving assembly line but it’s not clear which other US brands did so before the Great Depression when many companies went out of business. The surviving companies had adopted it for the most part.
No, I didn’t mean when cars started being mass manufactured, but what exact models were mass produced** after the T**, regardless of whether those other cars were at the same tech level or featured a new engine system or something. Basically if the T was the first real car ever produced, what were the first 5 or 10.
Here’s a related trivia question that you can use to stump your friends:
What is the longest continuously produced vehicle in the world (with no production interruptions)?
Why, the Chevy Suburban.
The first mass produced car was the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, from 1901-1907, entirely preceding the Model T.
I’m not sure what JakeRS is looking for. Hundreds of car models were manufactured in the U.S. and hundreds more around the world in the decade after 1908. I don’t know which of them were mass produced, but any car history book of early autos would have them by the dozens.
You can start here at this timeline of car history.
The question seems straightforward to me. Ford was the first to make an affordable mass-produced car, and that gave them a huge business advantage. Other companies, seeing how successful Ford was, would surely have made efforts to copy that success. What were those other efforts?
FoieGrasIsEvil, does the Suburban really beat out the (original) Beetle? That’s the answer I’ve always heard to that question, though I suppose that with the Suburban still in production, it might have passed up the Beetle recently.
Wiki calls the Chevy Suburban “the longest continuous use automobile nameplate in production,” having been first introduced in 1935. The VW Beetle started production three years later, with some interruptions after 1974.
The first successful cars produced on the same assembly line concept appear to have been Fords produced overseas, in England and France. It might be difficult to nail down specific models for other manufacturers in the States since multiple vehicles might be produced on the same line. The main models from Chevrolet, Dodge, Buick, and Willys-Overland would be the likeliest candidates. They were the companies (besides Ford) producing a lot of cars in that era.
I’m sorry I misunderstood your question. When you said that you wanted important mass produced cars, I thought you meant cars that were important because they advanced auto technology like the Model T. I guess you are just looking for any mass-produced cars contemporaneous with the Model T. I’m not sure if I have any books that focus on turn-of-the-century auto makers that includes production numbers. I’ll try to check.
Yep. It’s strange that such a important thing is so hard to find, you can easily find a full list of airplanes used by various countries during both WW1 and WW2, but nowhere a list of first 5 or 10 cars ever made.
That timeline I gave the link to has that info. The problem is that your OP made us think you wanted something else, and that the first cars were manufactured by Ford. As I said, there were hundreds of car manufacturers by 1908, 241 just from 1904 to 1908.
List of defunct automobile manufacturers of the United States has thousands of names.
I think part of the problem with your question is that you don’t understand early car production. The Ford Model T was definitely a milestone as far as production lines were concerned, but there were many, many cars that were mass produced long before the Model T. They just weren’t made on efficient assembly lines like the Model T. The Model T was nowhere near first mass produced car. It wasn’t even the first car produced on an assembly line. It was just the first car produced on a much more efficient assembly line, and was made cheap enough and in huge numbers that it became a very popular car.
The first mass-produced car was the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, in 1901. Oldsmobile also invented the basic concept of an assembly line for automobiles with the Curved Dash. The assembly line was not a new idea. Things had been made on assembly lines since the early 1800s. But Oldsmobile had the first automobile assembly line.
Ford came out with their Model A in 1903. Confusingly, once Ford reached the end of the alphabet they started over again, and produced a different Model A (starting in 1927) after the Model T. But there was a 1903 Model A. Ford made the Model A in 1903 and 1904, then switched over to the Model C in 1904. They didn’t start producing the Model T until 1908.
Part of the problem you are going to have in coming up with a list is what exactly are you going to call a car? Studebaker was making cars in the late 1800s, but they were electric cars. They didn’t switch over to gasoline engines until somewhere around 1910 or so. Is a mass-produced 1901 electric Studebaker a car or are you only looking for gasoline-powered cars? What about earlier cars like the Stanley Steamer? Steam competed with gasoline for many years. It wasn’t until gasoline cars got reliable enough that they outperformed steam cars, and then gasoline cars took over the market since they didn’t need to be warmed up and fiddled with so much just go get them going. The Stanley Steamer outsold all gasoline cars from 1899 to 1905 though. It was only after 1905 that gasoline cars began to dominate.
And even after 1905, electric and steam were still significant competitors to gasoline. What is often considered to have put the nail in the coffin of the steamer was the invention of the electric starter - invented in 1911, commonplace by 1920. Before then gas cars had to be cranked - some people weren’t strong enough to do it, and if you did it wrong you risked getting your arm broken. Waiting for your steamer to warm up didn’t seem so bad then. Both electrics and steamers were manufactured in dwindling quantities for up through the 1930s.
Also, once it became clear that automobiles were here to stay and not a passing fad, practically every carriage maker in existence tried to get into the automobile business. Note that they were already mass producing carriages to put motors in. Take look at wiki’s list of defunct car makers, and note how many of them were operating around the turn of the 20th century (already linked above):
Americans were not the inventors of the assembly line: