Last night President Obama delivered a rousing speech to a joint session of Congress and to the nation. But he made the following statement when speaking of reviving the US automotive industry:
industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it;
scores of communities depend on it; and I believe the nation that
invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
As Matt Yglesias already pointed out on his blog, the automobile was not invented in America. In terms of a commercially-viable, gasoline-powered vehicle, Germany was the home of the invention:
was built in Germany in 1889 by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Powered by a
1.5 hp, two-cylinder gasoline engine, it had a four-speed transmission and traveled at 10
mph. Another German, Karl Benz, also built a gasoline-powered car the same year. The
gasoline-powered automobile, or motor car, remained largely a curiosity for the rest of
the nineteenth century, with only a handful being manufactured in Europe and the United
States."
Since those early days, German and American automobile producers have been fierce competitors, but have also partnered and in some cases merged. It has been a roller-coaster history. Volkswagen went through a great deal of turmoil when it tried to manufacture the Rabbit in Pennsylvania in the late 1970's, only to shut down the plant in 1988, claiming American workers could not produce the same quality car as German workers. Now, VW is trying again with a new plant in Tennessee, scheduled to start production in 2011. Daimler has had better success building Mercedes in Alabama, but was damaged by its ill-fated purchase of Chrysler, one of the worst M&A failures in recent history. General Motors has had success with its German Opel subsidiary for many years, but now the problems in Detroit are threatening to bankrupt the German company. Some German politicians have suggested nationalizing the German company, separating Opel completely from its American parent.
No doubt, thanks to the global economic crisis, the landscape of the German-American automotive business enterprises and investments will look very different a year from now.
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I noticed that too. But I think the mass manufacture of autos was Ford’s invention.