Economy car
Economy car is a term mostly used in the United States for cars designed for low-cost purchase and operation. Typical economy cars are small, lightweight, and inexpensive to both produce and purchase. Stringent design constraints generally force economy car manufacturers to be inventive. Many innovations in automobile design were originally developed for economy cars, such as the Ford Model T and the Austin Mini.
Definition
The precise definition of what constitutes an economy car has varied with time and place, based on the conditions prevailing at the time, such as fuel prices, disposable income of buyers, and cultural mores. It typically refers to a car that is designed to be small and lightweight to offer low-cost operation. In any given decade globally, there has generally been some rough consensus on what constituted the minimum necessary requirements for a highway-worthy car, constituting the most economical car possible. However, whether that consensus could be a commercial success in any given country depended on local culture. Thus in any given decade, every country has had a rough national consensus on what constituted the minimum necessary requirements for the least expensive car that wasn't undesirable, that is, that had some commercially attractive amount of market demand, making it a mainstream economy car. In many countries at various times, mainstream economy and maximum economy have been one and the same.Background
From its inception into the 1920s, the Ford Model T fulfilled both of these roles simultaneously in the U.S. and in many markets around the world. In Europe and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, this was achieved by the much smaller Austin 7 and its competitors and derivatives. From the 1940s and into the 1960s, the Volkswagen Beetle played both roles throughout much of the world, particularly in Germany and Latin America – due to high fuel consumption, British, French, Italian, and Japanese models, all with better fuel economy, were able to capture the maximum-economy position in their home countries. By the 1970s the hatchback had become the standard body type for new economy car models.From 1960-1994 the Soviet Union sold the economy car Zaporozhets on the world market. In the mid-1980s, the Yugoslavian Zastava Koral, was being sold as the cheapest new car on the U.S. market. South Korea's Hyundai models also sold well in the U.S., and have gone on to be successful around the world.
Since the 1990s, the automotive industry has become extensively globalized, with all major manufacturers being multinational corporations who use globally sourced raw materials and components, with most moving assembly to the lowest labour cost countries. Today, a majority of major manufacturer offers economy cars, including at least one truly small car that may fall into subclassifications such as subcompact car, supermini, B-segment; city car; microcar; and others.
Gordon Murray, the Formula 1 and McLaren F1 designer, said when designing his new Murray T.25 city car: "I would say that building a car to sell for six thousand pounds and designing that for a high-volume production, where you have all the quality issues under control, is a hundred times more difficult than designing a McLaren F1, or even a racing car. It is certainly the biggest challenge I've ever had from a design point of view."
History
1886–1920
The history of the automobile after many experimental models dating back at least a hundred years, started with the first production car – the 1886 Benz Tricycle. This began a period that was later known as the Brass era which is considered to be from 1890 to 1918 in the U.S. In the UK this is split into the pre-1905 Veteran era and Edwardian era to 1918. The U.S. Veteran era is usually dated pre-1890.In the 1890s and into the first decade of the twentieth century; the motorized vehicle was considered a replacement for the carriages of the rich, or simply a dangerous toy, that annoyed and inconvenienced the general public. For example, the 1908 children's book The Wind in the Willows, pokes fun at early privileged motorists. The automotive industry in France were the world leaders during this period – the Locomotives Act 1865 had obstructed automotive development in the UK until it was mostly repealed by the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896. The high wheeler was an early car body style virtually unique to the United States. It was typified by large-diameter slender wheels, frequently with solid tires, to provide ample ground clearance on the primitive roads in much of the country at the turn of the 20th century. For the same reason, it usually had a wider track than normal automobiles.
The first car to be marketed as an 'economy car' was the 1901–1907 Oldsmobile Curved Dash - it was produced by the thousands, with over 19,000 built in all. It was inspired by the buckboard type horse and buggy, popular in rural areas of the U.S. It had two seats, but was less versatile than the vehicle that inspired it. It was produced after a fire at the Oldsmobile plant, when the prototype was saved by a nightwatchman named Stebbins and was the only product available to the company to produce.
Although cars were becoming more affordable before it was launched, the 1908–1927 Ford Model T is considered to be the first true economy car, because the very few previous vehicles at the bottom of the market were 'horseless carriages' rather than practical cars. The major manufacturers at the time had little interest in low-priced models. The first 'real' cars had featured the FR layout first used by the French car maker Panhard and so did the Model T.
Henry Ford declared at the launch of the vehicle:
I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one - and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.
The Ford Model T was a large scale mass-produced car; that very innovation, along with the attributes it required a simple inexpensive design, that allowed it to be the first car to exemplify the ideals of the economy car. Although it followed the Panhard mechanical layout, it used an epicyclic gearbox more like later automatic gearboxes, rather than the Panhard type manual gearbox, which in a developed form is still in common use today. The innovations involved in making it a successful design were in its production and materials technology; particularly the use of new vanadium steel alloys. Model T production was a leading example of the Taylorism school of scientific management and its production techniques evolved at the Highland Park Ford Plant that opened in 1910, after it outgrew the Piquette Avenue Plant. The River Rouge Plant which opened in 1919, was the most technologically advanced in the world, raw materials entered at one end and finished cars emerged from the other. The innovation of the moving assembly line, was inspired by the 'dis-assembly' plants of the Chicago meat packing industry, reduced production time from twelve and a half hours, to just an hour and thirty-three minutes per car. Black was the only colour available because it was the only paint that would dry in the required production time. The continuous improvement of production methods, and economies of scale from larger and larger scale production, allowed Henry Ford to progressively lower the price of the Model T throughout its production run. It was far less expensive, smaller, and more austere than its hand-built pre-first world war contemporaries. The size of the Model T was arrived at, by making its track to the width of the ruts in the unsurfaced rural American roads of the time, ruts made by horse-drawn vehicles. It was specifically designed with a large degree of axle articulation, and a high ground clearance, to deal with these conditions effectively. It had an under stressed engine. It set the template for American vehicles being larger than comparable vehicles in other countries, which would later on have economy cars scaled to their narrower roads with smaller engines.
In 1912 Edward G. Budd founded the Budd Company, which initially specialized in the manufacture of pressed-steel frames for automobiles. This built on his railroad experience. In 1899 he had taken his knowledge of pressed steel to the railroad industry. He worked with the Pullman Company on a contract for Pennsylvania Railroad, building the first all-steel railcar.
In 1913 in the UK, the 1018 cc "Bullnose" Morris Oxford was the first model launched by Morris Motors. Only 1302 were made. The Oxford was available as a two-seater, or van but the chassis was too short to allow four-seat bodies to be fitted. It made extensive use of bought in components, including many from the U.S. to reduce costs. The 1915-1919 Morris Cowley powered by a new US Continental engine was a bigger stronger better finished version of the first Oxford. The post–First World War Oxford was a deluxe version of that, now made plainer, 1915-1919 Cowley. They were larger cars with 50% bigger engines than the 1913 Oxford. By 1925 Cowleys and Oxfords were 41 per cent of British private car production and limousine and landaulet bodies for 14/28 Oxfords were supplied ex-factory. Morris then added a commercial vehicle operation and bought Wolseley Motors the following year. Cecil Kimber, a Morris employee, founded MG aiming to sell more Morrises. After the Second World War Morris Motors, having swept in Riley, merged with the Austin Motor Company together forming the British Motor Corporation.
In 1913 the British Trojan company had its prototype ready for production. It had a two-stroke engine with four cylinders arranged in pairs, and each pair shared a common combustion chamber - a doubled-up version of what would later be called the "split-single" engine. The pistons in each pair drove the crankshaft together as they were coupled to it by a V-shaped connecting rod. For this arrangement to work, it is necessary for the connecting rod to flex slightly, which goes completely against normal practice. The claim was that each engine had only seven moving parts, four pistons, two connecting rods and a crankshaft. This was connected to a two-speed epicyclic gearbox, to simplify gear changing, and a chain to the rear wheels. Solid tyres were used, even though these were antiquated for car use, to prevent punctures and very long springs used to give some comfort. Before production could start war broke out and from 1914 to 1918, the company made tools and gauges for the war effort.
In 1914 Ford was producing half a million Model Ts a year, with a sale price of less than. This was more than the rest of the U.S. auto industry combined and ten times the total national car production of 1908, the year of the cars launch. Also in that year Ford made headlines by increasing the minimum wage of his workers from $2.83 for a nine-hour day to $5.00 for an eight-hour day, to combat low workforce morale, and employee turnover problems because of the repetitive and stressful nature of working on the production line, and more radically, to turn his semi-skilled workers into potential customers.
The Ford Model T was the first automobile produced in many countries at the same time. It was the first 'World Car', since they were being produced in Canada and in Manchester, England starting in 1911 and were later assembled in Germany, Argentina, France, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan.
At the New York Motor Show in January 1915, William C. Durant the head of Chevrolet, launched the Chevrolet Four-Ninety, a stripped-down version of the Series-H, to compete with Henry Ford's Model T, and went into production in June. To aim directly at Ford, Durant said the new car would be priced at , the same as the Model T touring. Its introductory price was, however, although it was reduced to later when the electric starter and lights were made a option. Henry Ford responded by reducing the Model T to.
In 1916 Edward G. Budd's first big order for the Budd Company was from the Dodge brothers, who purchased 70,000 bodies, mounting the steel bodies onto conventional chassis frames.