Matt MacNabb - A Secret History of Brands - The Dark and Twisted Beginnings of the Brand Names We Know and Love

Louis was ready to go into business for himself. With his brothers, he established the Renault Frères Company and they manufactured automobiles on their family land in Billancourt. The older brothers handled the business side of things, while Louie dedicated his time to the design and manufacturing angle of the company. Sixty of the Renault vehicles were sold over six months. To purchase a Renault cost well over $1,000 (approximately $27,000 in 2016 or £21,500, which made it rather expensive for the average consumer of the era. The brothers were smart with their profits and reinvested their money into the business. Within a few years, they managed to double the size of the business and employ over one hundred people. Louis was a demanding perfectionist, but he expected excellence from himself as well as his employees. The Renaults were able to obtain various achievements in auto racing, which had become a popular attraction at the turn of the century amongst the well-off Parisians.

In the 1901 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris car race the Renaults won the first four places. In the Paris-Berlin race, the first three places, and in 1902 Marcel Renault won against Mercedes and Panhard. The many achievements gained by the Renaults provided their vehicles with a good amount of prestige and popularity throughout France. In 1903, tragedy struck when Marcel Renault was killed after losing control of his race car, but the company continued to move forward despite the loss of one brother, with Louis taking on more responsibilities. Louis continued to develop new ideas and one of those was to adapt their automobile to better fit the lives of the consumer.

In 1904 they released a roomier vehicle that comfortably seated four passengers. It was a move that would pave the way to the future of the company, for it was the following year that their business model would suddenly change. A Paris taxi company put in an order to Renault for a whopping 250 automobiles. Three years later the company had sold over 1,000 taxis around Europe. Renault soon became the largest auto producer in France, selling over 3,000 vehicles. Louis began to create models for specific sections of society, everything from an economy two cylinder, two-seater car, to a Coupe de Ville and a limousine for luxury.

In 1886 German Karl Benz introduced his Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which is often regarded as the first modern automobile, but it would be Gottlieb that first brought his design to America. In 1888 Gottlieb Daimler and Steinway & Sons came to a distribution agreement that would bring Daimler vehicles to the United States of America. The first American-made car was the Duryea automobile, built by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1893. The open-air car featured a gasoline-powered one-cylinder engine.

Ransom Olds was also experimenting during the time that Henry Ford was beginning to work with motor carriages. A fire destroyed the Olds factory in 1901 and only a curved-dash model vehicle survived. Olds used the remaining car as a prototype and through some strategic subcontracting he managed to produce over 400 cars that year. The Oldsmobile was designed for a larger consumer base, not just the wealthy. It was extremely economical and sturdy.

Henry Ford entered the marketplace with his vehicles in 1908, but automakers quickly encountered an issue, thanks to the Seldin patent. George B. Seldin was a patent attorney that had the ingenious idea of getting a patent on all gasoline-powered vehicles, so it become impossible for anyone to produce a gas-powered vehicle without paying a healthy royalty to Seldin. This hiccup was nothing more than an annoyance and didn’t stop the industry from experiencing plenty of growth. Henry Ford would challenge the Seldin monopoly in court and in 1911 he won his final victory over it, freeing all automakers from the confines of Seldin’s patent.

The automobile began to change from a novelty item for the wealthy into a viable transportation option for the ordinary citizen, thanks to the efforts of Henry Ford. Slowly, but surely the streets were becoming filled with noisy cars rather than horse drawn carriages. There was a new enthusiasm in developing motorised vehicles as a means of transport for all. There were more than eight million cars on the road by 1926, and by 1929 forty-five million Americans were using cars as a means to vacation across the country. The number of service stations would increase tenfold throughout the 1920s, along with roadside restaurants and motels. Los Angeles, California, was the first major city to be built around the use of the car and helped to develop a ‘car culture’ that would spread across the nation.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the car allowed families to escape the dustbowl by heading out West in search of a new life. The car was such an important part of American life that by the 1930s, citizens owned more cars than either telephones or bathtubs. The roads began to get paved and citizens were put to work, building bridges and tunnels to accommodate the intense growth of traffic on the roads. The 1939 World’s Fair was centred largely around the automobile industry, with several major companies showing off their new innovations and advances. The start of the Second World War halted the progress of the car for a time, but not before Henry Ford revolutionised the industry.

Henry Ford was born on 30 July 1863, in Greenfield Township, Michigan. The son of farmers, he never completed the eighth grade, but from a young age Henry showed a serious interest in the then modern study of mechanics. His parents supported his ambitions by constructing a workbench for him in the already cramped kitchen. Henry spent a lot of time at his workbench, tinkering and teaching himself all about how things worked. Life on the farm was very isolating to Ford and this gave him a great perspective later in life on the need for affordable transportation for the common person and how the new idea of a horseless carriage could transform the world.

Ford worked as a machinist throughout his twenties, until he got the opportunity to work for Thomas Edison. Henry Ford began his career as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in 1891, where he rose to the rank of Chief Engineer in 1893. It was during this time that Ford would experiment with gasoline engines and self-propelled horseless carriages, such as his quadricycle. Ford eventually crossed paths with Edison himself in 1896 and was given encouragement to move forward with a second vehicle. Ford launched his quadricycle and tested it around Detroit on 4 June, 1896. The horseless carriage featured 28in bicycle wheels, no brakes, and could reach top speeds of up to 20mph. The quadricycle wasn’t quite the vehicle Ford envisioned and had a few major flaws, such as the inability to go in reverse and a propensity to overheat.

Ford decided that it was time to branch out on his own and on 5 August, 1899, he founded the Detroit Automobile Company. He began to produce automobiles, backed by Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy. America had the railroads, but other transportation methods were terribly inconvenient. During this time an automobile-manufacturing boom hit the city and over fifty more companies sprung up that same year, with more to follow the next year. The majority of these companies would inevitably fail. The Detroit Automobile Company produced cars for two years, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Ford attributed this to a poor quality product that was overpriced. Henry Ford was beginning to form a vision for the automobile industry and it required him to have more control over all aspects of production.

The next venture that Ford undertook was far more successful, but in order to attract backers he had to do something bold. Ford built a race car in secret to help build publicity for himself. On 10 October 1901, Ford took on famous racing driver Alexander Winston in a one-on-one sweepstakes race. Ford had no money or reputation to hire a real driver, so he put himself behind the wheel. It was a risky venture, to be sure, but Henry Ford was never afraid to take the risks necessary to succeed. He also didn’t fear the potential failure; in fact it seemed to drive him on. On the sixth lap, Ford closed the gap and his rival’s engine overheated; Ford won by nearly a mile. It was as a result of this spectacle that Ford was able to forge the Ford Motor Company.