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the world to the concept of the moving ‘assembly line’ in 1913. Though the word may be his, the idea wasn’t. For decades scores of other industries, from vegetable canning to meat wholesaling, had used assembly line methods, but had referred to them as ‘continuous process manufacturing’ or ‘flow production’. Ford simply adapted the idea to a much larger manufacturing process.33 With his revolutionary methods and by keeping the car basic – ‘You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black’ was his oft-repeated quip – Ford cut the time it took to produce a Model T from fourteen man-hours in 1910 to just two man-hours in 1913,34 and with it of course the price fell. The first Model T cost $850 and rose the next year to $950, but after that, with Ford’s novel and wondrously efficient production lines and increasing economies of scale, the price fell continuously. By 1916 a new Model T cost as little as $345. Even so, that was far more money than most people could get their hands on. A new system of financing arose and with it came a raft of ominous new expressions: instalment plan, time payments, one-third down, downpayment and that perennial invitation to ruin, buy now, pay later.

A month before the first Model T was produced, another great name of the industry was born: General Motors. The company, which had begun life as the Flint Road Cart Company, was founded by William Crapo ‘Billy’ Durant, a mercurial figure described by one friend as ‘a child in emotions, in temperament and in mental balance’. Durant knew nothing of engineering and was not a gifted innovator. Indeed he wasn’t even a particularly astute businessman. He was simply a great accumulator. He bought companies indiscriminately, not just car makers, but enterprises that were involved with the automobile business only tangentially, if at all – companies like the Samson Sieve-Grip Tractor Company (which built tractors steered by reins on the dubious grounds that farmers would find them more horse-like) and a one-man refrigerator company that would eventually become Frigidaire. Many of his automotive acquisitions became great names – Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet – but many others, like Cartercar, Sheridan, Scripps-Booth and Oakland, were never more than highly dubious. His strategy, as he put it, was to ‘get every kind of car in sight’ in the hope that the successes would outweigh the failures. They didn’t always. He lost control of General Motors in 1910, got it back in 1916, lost it again in 1920. By 1936, after more bad investments, he was bankrupt with debts of nearly $ 1 million and assets of just $250.35

Many of his best people found his imperiousness intolerable and took their talents elsewhere. Walter Chrysler left to form the Chrysler Corporation. Henry and Wilfred Leland departed to create Lincoln (which later came back to the GM fold). Charles Nash went on to build Nash-Rambler. Others were dismissed, often for trifling transgressions. In 1911 Durant hired a Swiss mechanic/racing driver named Louis Chevrolet. Unfortunately for them both, Durant couldn’t abide smoking. When, shortly after joining the company, Chevrolet wandered into Durant’s office with a cigarette dangling from his lips, Durant took the instant decision that the only thing he liked about the Swiss mechanic was his name. He dismissed Chevrolet, who thence dropped from sight as effectively as if he had fallen through a trapdoor, but kept his melodic moniker and built it into one of the great names of automotive history. (Durant was also responsible for the Chevrolet symbol, which he found as a pattern on wallpaper in a hotel room in Paris. He carefully removed a strip, took it home with him and had his art department work it up into a logo.)

As the opening years of the twentieth century ticked by, two things became clear: America desperately needed better roads and they weren’t going to be paid for with government money. Into this seeming impasse stepped Carl Graham Fisher, one of the most remarkable go-getters of his or any other age. A former bicycle and car racer (for