Many companies entered the automobile manufacturing industry during its early years. In the US alone there were over 1,800 companies manufacturing automobiles between 1896 and 1930. Most of these companies didn’t last, and after 1930 not many new companies got into the business in the US. In fact, when you look at the top 10 car manufacturers in the world today (as of 2015), only one of them was formed after 1948. Some have been around for over 100 years while most have been around for at least 75 years.

Below is a look at the date that the top manufacturers were founded:

1899 – Renault founded by the Renault brothers (Louis, Marcel and Fernand)

1903 – Ford founded by Henry Ford

1908 – General Motors founded by William C. Durant

1909 – Suzuki Loom Works founded (began selling cars in 1937)

1911 – Chevrolet founded by William C. Durant

1925 – Chrysler founded by Walter Chrysler

1933 – Nissan founded

1937 – Toyota founded by Kiirchiro Toyoda

1937 – Volkswagon founded by German Labour Front

1944 – Kia founded

1948 – Honda founded by Soichiro Honda

1967 – Hyundai Motor Company established by Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company

Volvo was founded in 1927 in Gothenburg, Sweden as a subsidiary company of SKF (Svenska Kullagerfabriken). The managing director was Assar Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson was the technical director. From the beginning, the company focused on the people who would be driving their cars which meant a focus on quality and safety.

Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is and must remain, safety

— Assar Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson 1927

The first Volvo car was manufactured on April 14, 1927. The model was the OV4 and was nicknamed ‘Jakob’. They then produced both closed-top and cabriolet models of the OV4 which were designed to hold up better in the harsh climate Swedish climate. The OV4 was produced until 1929 when the six-cylinder PV651 model was introduced. Production began to ramp up and by 1932 Volvo had produced 10,000 vehicles.

Volvo began work on producing a less expensive car that would be more affordable for the average person. This led to the PV51 model in 1936. Sweden was neutral during World War II so Volvo continued producing vehicles. However, production dropped sharply during the war dropping to a low of 99 vehicles in 1942. The PV444, released in 1944, was one of the most important vehicles in the company’s history. The PV444 was a smaller car that was an immediate success. Its production ran until 1966 and was the car that allowed them to have a presence in the US auto market.

Volvo continued to grow over the years and they eventually sold Volvo cars to Ford in 1999. In 2010 Geely Holding Group (a Chinese automobile manufacturing company) acquired Volvo from Ford.

In the late 1860’s several people were working on attaching a steam-powered engine to a ‘velocipede’ (a velocipede is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels such as a bicycle) in different parts of the world. This includes Pierre Michaux in Paris, France, as well as, Sylvester Roper in Roxbury, Massachusetts. This work continued to evolve and in 1885 Gottlieb Daimler introduces the first gas-engined ‘motorcycle’ by attaching an engine to a wooden bike. Many bicycle makers were experimenting with designs that included an internal-combustion engine, and in 1894 the Hildebrand & Wolfmueller was the first series production ‘motorcycle’ and there were over 200 of them on the road.

Over the next 20 years, motorcycle technology continued to improve as more companies began working on them. They played an important role in WWI as riders used motorcycles instead of horses for messaging, reconnaissance, and military police. One example of this is the ‘Triumph Model H’ which was a British motorcycle engineered by Triumph Engineering Co. Ltd. Over 30,000 of them were sold to Allied forces during the war.

After the war, Harley-Davidson (founded in 1903) became the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world. Within years DKW (headquartered in Germany) took over the top spot. Companies around the world continued to manufacture and improve motorcycle technology and by the 1960s Honda became the largest manufacturer in the world and still holds the top spot today.

The Chevrolet bowtie logo is one of the most recognizable logos in the world. It was introduced as the company’s logo in 1913 by William C. Durant who was one of the company’s co-founders. The logo shape has changed very little over the years, while the color and detail have been different at different times.

How did this logo come to be? There are four different theories about where inspiration comes from for the logo and we’ll take a look at each of them.

• French Wallpaper – This theory says that while Durant was traveling in France in 1908 he saw a pattern on wallpaper in a French hotel that caught his eye. He then tore off a piece of the wallpaper and took it home with him and showed others the design and stated he thought it would make a good nameplate for a car.
• Newspaper Ad – An article published in 1986 had an interview with Durant’s wife Catherine, who said that the design for the logo was inspired by a design Durant saw in a newspaper while on holiday in Virginia in 1912.
• Dinner – Durant’s daughter, Margery, published a book about her father in 1929. In this book, she discussed how Durant would sometimes doodle on paper during dinner and she said “I think it was between the soup and the fried chicken one night that he sketched out the design that is used on the Chevrolet car to this day.”
• Swiss Flag – This theory says the design comes from a stylized version of the Swiss flag. Durant’s business partner, Louis Chevrolet, was born in Switzerland which could have led to the connection.

We’ll probably never know which is true or even if they’re all wrong.

Formation

The Chevrolet Motor Company was founded in Detroit, Michigan on November 3, 1911. The founders were William C. Durant and Louis Chevrolet, along with several investment partners. William C. Durant founded General Motors several years earlier but was forced out in 1910. He wanted to create a company that could compete with General Motors. Louis Chevrolet was a famous Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer. The goal was that the famous name of Chevrolet combined with Durant’s business acumen would put the company in a position to succeed.

First Production Vehicle

The ‘Series C Classic Six’ was the first car made by Chevrolet and one pre-production model was made early on. This model was fine-tuned in 1912 and production began in 1913.

Reverse Merger with General Motors

Louis Chevrolet and Durant had differences in the company’s direction and in 1914, Louis Chevrolet sold his shares to Durant. Chevrolet became profitable quickly and Durant used these profits to buy shares of General Motors stock. Eventually, Durant took control of General Motors, and a reverse merger was made with General Motors on May 2, 1918, that had Durant in charge of the combined company. The Chevrolet brand continued to grow and be profitable even as Durant was forced out of the company in 1920.

The Soybean Car was a plastic-bodied car that was shown to the public on August 13, 1941. It was a project of Henry Ford’s and the goal was to create a car made of plastic according to the Henry Ford Museum there were three reasons for this project:

1. Ford was looking to integrate industry with agriculture
2. Ford claimed that his plastic cars were safer than traditional steel cars
3. Ford was hoping to replace the traditional metals that were used in cars. This was especially relevant at the time because of the shortage of metal due to World War II.

Ford initially had E.T. Gregorie in charge of the project but eventually transferred it to the Soybean Laboratory in Greenfield Village under the care of Lowell Overly. The frame of the car was made of tubular steel which was attached to fourteen plastic panels. The car weighed about 2000 lbs, which was about 1000 lbs less than a typical car at the time.

There is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the car as the exact ingredients used for the plastic panels are unknown since there is no record of the formula used. Overly said the material body was ‘soybean fiber in phenolic resin with formaldehyde used in impregnation’. Another article claimed it was made from a formula including ingredients such as soybeans, wheat, hemp, flax, and ramie. Plastic engineers today question whether it contained a significant amount of soy material at all.

Because of World War II, automotive production dropped dramatically in the US and the plastic car experiment was put on hold. By the time the war ended the project was abandoned. The original model that was unveiled in 1941 was destroyed by E.T. Gregorie.

In the mid-1930’s Adolf Hitler made the decision that he wanted Germany to produce a basic vehicle that was affordable for more German citizens. At the time, most of the cars produced in Germany were luxury vehicles and too expensive for the average citizen. Hitler laid out very specific criteria for the vehicle that was to be produced which included:

• It must have a top speed of 62 mph
• It must have an air-cooled engine
• It must be able to transport 2 adults and 3 children
• It must cost no more than 1,000 Reich marks (about $140 at the time)

On May 28, 1937, a state-owned factory was sponsored and the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (Company for the Preparation of the German Volkswagon LTD) was established. The following year this was renamed Volkswagenwerk GmbH. Ferdinand Porsche was given the task of designing the vehicle and these designs were completed by 1938. The design was the first generation of what would become the popular Volkswagen Beetle design.

Construction for the factory began in May 1938 in modern-day Wolfsburg. With the start of World War II in 1939, only a small number of vehicles were produced before production was shifted from vehicles for citizens to military vehicles. American forces captured the facility in 1945 and then turned it over to the British. It was then used to repair captured enemy vehicles and in time-shifted back to producing vehicles for citizens. In 1949, after being under British control for several years, ownership was transferred to the German Government. From there the company continued to expand and turn into what it is today.

Horsepower is a term that we’ve all heard in relation to the power of a car, but have you ever wondered what it actually means? Let’s take a look at where the horsepower measurement came from and what it means in terms of power.

Where did horsepower come from?

James Watt was a Scottish inventor and engineer who lived from 1736 – 1819. He became interested in steam engines at an early age and worked on ways to improve their efficiency and power. To help sell his engines, he needed a way to measure the power of an engine in terms that his contemporaries would understand so he conducted a series of experiments with horses and mine ponies to see how much work a horse could do in a minute. His findings led to him defining 1 horsepower as being equal to 33,000 ft*lbf/min (foot-pounds per minute). 1 horsepower is also equal to 746 W (watts).

How much horsepower can a human achieve?

This varies greatly based on the health of the human and whether you are looking at short burst output or output over a period of time. Over a short period of time, a typical human can produce 1.2 hp while an athlete can produce about 2.5 hp. Over longer periods of time (several hours) an athlete can sustain about 0.3 hp while a typical human can sustain 0.1 hp indefinitely.

One of the best ways to save time is to cut down on writing/typing by selecting common answers from dropdown lists. This short video shows how to add notes to dropdown lists in InspectARide.

Car insurance is a fact of life these days. In many countries, it is a legal requirement to have some sort of vehicle insurance when driving. Below are some interesting facts about the development of car insurance over the years.

1. One of the earliest forms of insurance on a vehicle can be traced back to around 1750 BC and was part of the Code of Hammurabi. This was for sailing merchants who received a loan to fund their shipment, where they would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender guaranteeing they would cancel the loan if the shipment was lost or stolen at sea.
2. More modern forms of insurance began to develop in London during the early part of the 17th century.
3. It is thought that the first car accident happened in 1891 in the state of Ohio.
4. In 1897 Gilbert L Loomis asked Travelers Insurance to write a policy to cover incidents that occurred resulting from driving his steam-powered car. Car insurance was a new concept and the policy was written as a horse-and-carriage policy.
5. Travelers Insurance co-wrote the first true car insurance policy in 1898 to Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo New York.
6. The first car insurance policy cost $12.25 and covered Dr. Martin for $5000 if his car collided with a horse.
7. In 1925, Connecticut became the first US state to require car owners to pay for any injuries or property damage resulting from a car accident.
8. In 1927 Massachusetts became the first state to require that drivers prove financial responsibility as a requirement for registering a car.