Miller - Car Crazy: The Battle for Supremacy between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age

Car Crazy

Also by G. Wayne Miller

The Work of Human Hands: Hardy Hendren and Surgical Wonder at Childrens Hospital

Coming of Age: The True Adventures of Two American Teens

Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie and the Companies That Make Them

King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery

Men and Speed: A Wild Ride Through NASCARs Breakout Season

The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvards Transplant Research Lab

An Uncommon Man: The Life and Times of Senator Claiborne Pell

Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Harnessing the Power of the Four Cognitive Modes (with Stephen M. Kosslyn, PhD)

Copyright 2015 G. Wayne Miller

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Book Design by Trish Wilkinson Set in 11 point Minion Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, G. Wayne, author.

Car crazy : the battle for supremacy between Ford and Olds and the dawn of the automobile age / G. Wayne Miller. First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-551-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-61039-552-6 (e-book) 1. Ford, Henry, 18631947. 2. Ford Motor Company. 3. Ford Model T automobileHistory. 4. Olds, Ransom Eli, 18641950. 5. General Motors Corporation. Oldsmobile DivisionHistory. 6. Oldsmobile autom obileHistory. 7. Automobile industry and tradeUnited StatesHistory. 8. Automobile industry and tradeUnited StatesManagement. I. Title.

TL215.F7M53 2015

338.4'7629222097309041dc23

2015024477

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my late mother-in-law, Daisy Gabrielle, a woman of great kindness, courage, and wisdom. Daisy was filled with humor and grace. Being with her was always magical.

Contents

The Carmakers

Karl Friedrich Benz , German engineer, inventor, and manufacturer

Roy D. Chapin , Oldsmobile sales chief and test driver; founder of Hudson Motor Car Company

James J. Couzens , Ford Motor Company secretary

William Crapo Billy Durant , creator of General Motors

Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea , builders of the first US production car

Henry Ford , founder of Ford Motor Company

Edward S. Spider Huff , Fords brilliant but bedeviled leading engineer

mile Levassor , founder of French pioneer auto company Panhard et Levassor

Alexander Y. Malcomson , early partner of Henry Ford

Ransom Eli Olds , founder of Oldsmobile

Frederic L. Smith , secretary-treasurer of Oldsmobile

The Drivers

Tom Cooper , a winner on the track who died in a midnight race through Central Park

Dwight B. Huss , one of two men who competed in historys first race across the continent

Webb Jay , whose racing career ended when he crashed his steam car, Whistling Billy

Ernest D. Keeler , a young racing star who died in a crash three days after Cooper

Percy F. Megargel , a writer and romantic who raced Huss from Manhattan to Oregon, then made the first winter and double-continental crossing, from New York to the West Coast and back

Barney Oldfield , greatest race-car driver of the early era... and maybe ever

The Mechanics

David F. Fassett , rode with Megargel on the winter crossing

Barton Stanchfield , rode with Megargel during the cross-continent race

Milford Wigle , rode with Huss during the cross-continent race

The Patent Players

Frederick P. Fish , president of AT&T and lawyer for the anti-Ford side

Charles M. Hough , judge who decided the Selden suit

Walter C. Noyes , judge who decided the Selden suit on appeal

George B. Selden , who claimed in a US patent to have invented the automobile

Ralzemond B. Parker , battled-hardened lawyer hired to defend Ford in the Selden suit

The Good Roads Evangelists

James W. Abbott , official with the Federal Highway Administrations precursor agency

Albert Augustus Pope , bicycle- and carmaking magnate

Isaac B. Potter , editor, engineer, and lawyer

Roy Stone , first head of the US Office of Road Inquiry

The Scoundrels

Lone John , a lunatic Wyoming shepherd

Big Nose George Parrott , an outlaw who met a most bizarre fate

The Road Hog , any of various anti-car farmers

The ruffians , lads, and men in New York who stoned evil motorists

Edward R. Thomas , wealthy Manhattan heir and murderous driver

S ince my first car , an old black Ford sedan that I drove in high school, I have owned more than ten automobiles. That qualifies me as a motorist, but until this book, I was not alone in believing the US car industry essentially began with Henry Fords Model T, introduced in 1908. I thought that iconic vehicle and a few others made by a handful of fellow manufacturers began the profound transformation of American society that has culminated in our way of life today.

The Model T indeed was revolutionarybut it wasnt first. Oldsmobile founder Ransom Eli Olds built his first car, a three-wheeled thing steered with a tiller and powered by a steam engine, in 1887. The first US vehicle intended for sale was demonstrated in 1893, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Ford drove the first automobile he made, a boxlike contraption on big bicycle tires, through the streets of Detroit in 1896. Many others in America and Europe, where the auto industry really began, were also building carsor planning to. Then, between 1900 and 1908, more than five hundred domestic carmakers went into business. Competition was brutal. The vast majority of firms failed. And a colorful cast of characters abounded: heroes, villains, schemers, and visionariesthe people who imagined a wondrous future with the automobile. That future, as we know today, was both blessing and curse.

By the dawn of what would be called the American Century, the car was already causing unprecedented turmoiland it intensified during that first decade of the 1900s, the period I primarily chronicle in this book. Car enthusiasts battled car-haters in courts, in legislatures, and on the roads. Farmers, spooked by the evil new machines, defended their terrified horsessometimes with shotguns and threats of murder. Motorists ridiculed the horse as filthy and useless, and the old-fashioned farmer as ignorant. Rowdies stoned Gilded Age aristocrats as they flaunted their high-priced imports on the streets of Manhattan. The police chase, the hit-and-run, and the fatal accident became staples of a dramatic new journalistic genre.

The car warsbetween one manufacturer and another; one driver and another; between pedestrian and horse and machine; between bucolic past and engine-powered futureplayed out in the trade journals and the general-circulation newspapers, in the countryside and in urban centers, in most states and in many cities, especially New York City, the early heart of the car market and the nations media capital, then as now.