If you think about what a modern automobile is, it’s amazing anyone can afford to buy one. For most of the history of automobiles, a car was expected to do little more than travel from place to place with some degree of reliability and economy.
As roads and technology improved and more people began to use them, cars were expected to go a little faster, ride more comfortably and last long enough to make the investment worthwhile. Almost any new car could do these things well by the early 1930s, and even as technology advanced over the next 40 years, what the world expected of a car remained basically the same. Speed, convenience and reliability improved steadily, but for more than 70 years, a car was expected to do nothing more than move people and their stuff with a degree of comfort and style commensurate with the sale price.Then the government got involved in automobile design. Actually, the federal and various state governments started requiring certain safety items as the technology became practical, such as electric lights, safety glass and redundant throttle return springs. But beginning with the creation of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards in 1966 and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1973, the very mission of the automobile began changing. Instead of just carrying people and their stuff quickly, comfortably and reliably, cars were eventually required to protect their occupants in a crash, retain all unburned fuel vapors, convert the byproducts of combustion into less harmful gases and report their own malfunctions. Today they must meet these and many other safety and performance requirements set by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the repair industry and several governments, especially if the car is built for export.As if new technical design standards weren’t enough, the buying public’s idea of an automobile has also gone light-years beyond reliable, economical transportation. The concept of ‘automotive style,’ which once referred to a range with economy cars at one end of the spectrum and luxury models at the other, has now expanded to include maybe a dozen different types of automobile. Compared with earlier designers (including those resurrected from the dead to make television commercials), today’s automotive designers and engineers are nothing less than heroes. They must create a car that meets volumes of safety and emissions regulations and wildly imaginative market demands, all of which were undreamed of only a generation ago. And as always, they have to figure out how to mass-produce these machines at a specific cost, because the sale price is pretty much set before the design work is even begun. To be sure, they have a lot of advanced tools at their disposal, but still …For decades, designers and engineers only needed to create a mechanical device that could carry us wherever there were roads. Now they are engaged in creating machines more advanced and complex than those that took us to the moon, and sometimes we drive those machines where there are no roads. And as it was in Henry Ford’s day, the mid-market price of these marvels of modern technology is still within reach of the people who build them. Amazing.
As roads and technology improved and more people began to use them, cars were expected to go a little faster, ride more comfortably and last long enough to make the investment worthwhile. Almost any new car could do these things well by the early 1930s, and even as technology advanced over the next 40 years, what the world expected of a car remained basically the same. Speed, convenience and reliability improved steadily, but for more than 70 years, a car was expected to do nothing more than move people and their stuff with a degree of comfort and style commensurate with the sale price.Then the government got involved in automobile design. Actually, the federal and various state governments started requiring certain safety items as the technology became practical, such as electric lights, safety glass and redundant throttle return springs. But beginning with the creation of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards in 1966 and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1973, the very mission of the automobile began changing. Instead of just carrying people and their stuff quickly, comfortably and reliably, cars were eventually required to protect their occupants in a crash, retain all unburned fuel vapors, convert the byproducts of combustion into less harmful gases and report their own malfunctions. Today they must meet these and many other safety and performance requirements set by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the repair industry and several governments, especially if the car is built for export.As if new technical design standards weren’t enough, the buying public’s idea of an automobile has also gone light-years beyond reliable, economical transportation. The concept of ‘automotive style,’ which once referred to a range with economy cars at one end of the spectrum and luxury models at the other, has now expanded to include maybe a dozen different types of automobile. Compared with earlier designers (including those resurrected from the dead to make television commercials), today’s automotive designers and engineers are nothing less than heroes. They must create a car that meets volumes of safety and emissions regulations and wildly imaginative market demands, all of which were undreamed of only a generation ago. And as always, they have to figure out how to mass-produce these machines at a specific cost, because the sale price is pretty much set before the design work is even begun. To be sure, they have a lot of advanced tools at their disposal, but still …For decades, designers and engineers only needed to create a mechanical device that could carry us wherever there were roads. Now they are engaged in creating machines more advanced and complex than those that took us to the moon, and sometimes we drive those machines where there are no roads. And as it was in Henry Ford’s day, the mid-market price of these marvels of modern technology is still within reach of the people who build them. Amazing.
