Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [53]
But we're not here for the sanitised version of events proffered by a motor show, we're here to discover the truth about Detroit, the cradle of motoring civilisation and the city the car industry built for itself. And the truth is not to be found in the cosy, glitzy surrounds of the Cobo Center. The truth, as ever, is out there.
The batteries in Steve's camera begin to fade at minus 10, and so do I. Fingers and mechanisms seize and conversation becomes difficult owing to numbing of the face. Detroit in January really frosts my ass, and it's tempting to think the American auto industry made an early blunder in the choice of its location. Michigan is the only state in the US from which, looking south, you can see Canada. Eh? Florida would have made more sense, you guys.
There are good reasons for things working out the way they did. The region belonged to the Wyandot people until 1701, when the white man came. Actually, it was a Frenchman, Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, an army captain sent by the king to establish a trading post and stem British encroachment into the area. He reputedly landed at the spot now occupied by the Renaissance Center, the '70s-built five-tower complex recently bought by GM for conversion to its new world headquarters. Cadillac named his settlement Pontchartrain d'Etroit, source of its current name. Some two centuries later, one Henry Leland, an admirer of the pioneering spirit and a man prepared to push the boundaries of manufacturing possibility, named his car company after the explorer.
For over a hundred years the tiny settlement – population 1,650 in 1810 – was fought over by the British, the French and the Indians. But by the time it was admitted to the Union in 1847 steam navigation was well established and the Erie canal had been built, which slashed the Detroit-New York journey time by 90 per cent. Detroit became an important shipbuilding centre and, with the opening of the railway to Chicago in 1852, a suitable transfer point for grain and lumber from the American interior. To the old world this promised work and prosperity, and Detroit's legendary immigration began. Towards the close of the century the population was up to nearly 300,000, following the influx of Irish, Italians, Ukrainians and, most numerously, Poles. Detroit was now famous for iron, steel, steam engines and ships, and as a world centre for cast-iron stove manufacturing. The infrastructure that would be required by mass manufacturing was already in place and with it the necessary technical skills. Walter Chrysler, after all, worked on the railways. By now Detroit was pretty much gagging for the horseless carriage.
When it came in 1896, trundling into town under the command of its creators Charles B King and his mechanic accomplice Oliver E Barthol, it was just that. It is preserved in the Detroit Historical Museum and really is just an ox cart with an engine lashed in the back. But, unlike Benz's effort, it had a full complement of wheels and that engine was a sophisticated in-line four. Already the American car business was looking cocky. It seems to have been well received, too, but then this was a town that thrived on new technology.
Ransom E Olds was Detroit's first proper car maker. He would have been Newark's, but a chance meeting on a railway platform with a copper magnate named Smith persuaded him to set up in Detroit in return for financial backing. He built the first car factory in 1899. It burned down two years later, but his timekeeper James Brady rescued the prototype Curved Dash Olds from the flames. He went on to become the mayor of Detroit, as was only right, for the Olds became the world's first series production car, with 425 built in 1901. Suppliers sprang up to serve the endeavour and Detroit was go.
The Olds was not mass-produced, mind, though it undoubtedly threw the gauntlet down in front of Henry Ford, who set up shop proper in 1903. General Motors came in 1908, with William