By 1911 the automobile industry had come into its own. Securities of automotive companies were listed in the New York Stock Exchange. The Ford Motor Company had been formed, and by 1908 had introduced the historic Model T. The Buick Motor Company, the Olds Motor Works, the Cadillac Automobile Company and the Oakland Motor Car Company had already achieved individual success - and had been combined with other firms by William Crapo Durant into the General Motors Company. Durant then lost control of the organization and moved on to another career, building and selling a new automobile, which had been designed by and named for Louis Chevrolet, a French race driver. Another promoter, Benjamin Briscoe, had brought together some 130 companies to create the United States Motor Car Corporation. This ambitious merger soon ran into financial difficulties and ran into receivership in 1912. Michigan, and especially Detroit, were now established as centers of automobile production. The general public took to motorized vehicles like moths to a flame. While the heads of companies were inventing, merging, maneuvering, suing, counter-suing, promoting, failing, or amassing fantastic wealth, curious Americans from Oregon to Maine were interested enough to open their wallets. Dealerships were set up in livery stables, blacksmith shops and general stores in the largest cities and in the smaller towns. Some of the mechanically-minded individuals assembled their own vehicles, while others turned to their favorite source of supply for anything - the Sears, Roebuck catalog - to order a motor buggy "so safe that a child could run it."
Many of those who contributed to the automotive industry have faded from memory and into historic oblivion (or those whose ideas were stolen, into oblivion itself). Others have been engraved into automobile history on nameplates. Walter Chrysler, Louis Chevrolet, David Dunbar Buick, Ransom E. Olds, Henry Ford, John and Horace Dodge, The White, Mack, and Duesenberg brothers have not been forgotten. John Mohler Studebaker, John North Willys, Harry Stutz, William Crapo Durant, Edwin Ross Thomas, Francis and Freelan Stanley, Johathan Dixon Maxwell, Charles W. Nash, James Ward Packard, Thomas B. Jeffery, E. L. Cord, George N. Pierce, Albert Augustus Pope, Howard C. Marmon and others like them have a niche in the automotive annuals because their names graced the automobiles and radiator caps of their era.
Only an avid hobbyist or automotive historian is familiar with the pioneers like H. Bartol Brazier of Philadelphia; J. L. Cato of San Francisco; Dan J. Piscorski of St. Louis, Missouri; W. H. Kiblinger of Auburn, Indiana; Percy L. Klock of New York; F. J. Fanning of Chicago; C. Clarence Holden of Comanche, Texas; or J. A. Moncrieff of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They had cars named for them as well, but for some reason, the vehicles failed to catch on and their creators were ground into the oils of automotive history by more popular models.
In 1904, Graham Fisher and James A. Allison organized the Prest-O- Lite Company and introduced a new system of acetylene gas headlights. In 1908, the year of the Model T, C. Harold Wills developed the use of vanadium steel for Ford. At the same time, Charles Y. Knight was perfecting his sleeve-valve engine, and the Fischer brothers founded a company which was to gain fame as a producer of closed auto bodies. Scientific experimentation of Charles Franklin Kettering of the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company helped bring about such innovations as the electric starter and ethyl gasoline. Harvey S. Firestone, B. F. Goodrich, Arthur W. Grand and others worked with rubber to overcome deficiencies in tire construction. Edward G. Budd, a young Philadelphia engineer, is credited with the idea for all-steel bodies for automobiles. Before this time, many of the manufacturers had been carriage makers and used the same techniques and designs they had previously used for horse-drawn vehicles. The heat of early-day motors caused wood to warp and weakened the glue which held it together. Rough roads made joints give way so that the automobile creaked and groaned. Budd left a good job to pursue his idea with his own company; in 1912, he finally convinced the Oakland and Hupmobile people to try his all-steel body frames, and the next year he received his first large contract from John and Horace Dodge.
Arthur O. Smith, the son of a Milwaukee blacksmith and bicycle parts manufacturer, shifted his interests from bicycles to the new-fangled horseless carriage. He sold his first pressed steel frames to the Peerless Motor Company early in the 20th century and when other auto builders became interested, he offered a house and lot to a foreman who could increase his production to twelve frames per day. It was then that he was visited by Henry Ford. Ford ordered 10,000 Model T frames for delivery in four months; a challenge that was accepted, and by 1921, the A. O. Smith Corporation was capable of producing Ford's first order in a single day.
Hundreds of ideas have come from unknown mechanics who achieved neither fame nor pay for their contributions. The automobile, as it progressed, was a product of many hands, of revolutionary concepts, and of simple, almost unnoticed upgrading. In the end, the one who received the most for these challenges and changes was the motorist, whose interest, money, and enthusiasm have forced the auto-moguls to upgrade, perfect, and add to previous achievements in order to stay in the competition.
The Cadillac is named after the man who, in the 1700's, founded Detroit. His name was Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.