Welcome to watchmojo.com. I’m your host Ashken and today we look back to an era where Detroit’s Big Three, Chrysler, Ford and Gm were kings of the road.
Situated in the northern Midwest of the US, Detroit became the center of American car production at the beginning of the 20th century. The big three Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors created the ultimate motor city.
In 1903, the Ford Motor Company pioneered the use of the assembly line in manufacturing automobiles. The model T-car was then introduced, a car that standardized production would revolutionize the industry. A handful of major automobile manufacturers notably Chrysler, GM, Packard, and Ford survived the technological and managerial transformations that created the modern auto industry. Ford was by far the most influential. It’s the center line became—for the mass production of cars worldwide and its wedges were high enough to allow workers to actually buy cars themselves.
Ford’s technological innovations culminating in the construction of the massive rigorous plant which employed more than 90,000 workers at its peak brought visitors from around the world to marvel at the might and ingenuity of American industry.
Business analysts coined the term Fordison to describe Detroit’s distinctive contribution to the technologically advanced labor intensive, highly productive form of modern industrial capitals.
By the mid20th century, one in every six working Americans was employed directly or indirectly by the automotive industry and Detroit was at its heart. The big three auto firms, GM, Ford and Chrysler were all based in Metropolitan Detroit. The auto industry consumed vast amounts of steel, glass, copper, and later plastic, fueling the rise of the host of auto-related industries in and around the city. Detroit was in the words of one historian, a total industrial landscape, a place where hundreds of thousands of blue color workers found work due to the car industry. They found work on the assembly lines and stumping and—dye plants, in foundries and in man y small factories that made all sorts of ports from—to hood ornaments. This motor city benefited from the building of cars while Detroit pride sorted the rest of the America.
In our next video, we look at some of the causes for the fall of the motor city.
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