Evolution car body

Car : Martini 12/16 CV
Year : 1909
Engine : 4 cylinders in line
Bore and stroke :80×110 mm
Cylinder capacity : 2212 cc
Gears : 4 forward
Brake horse power : 16
Maximum speed : 40 mph
Wheelbase :-
Suspension : front and rear: semi-elliptic leaf- springs
Martini was founded in Frauenfeld by Friedrich von Martini and it specialized in sheet pressing and the manufacture of rifles. In 1902 it began to construct cars, specifically the French Rochet-Schneider (though having previously made an attempt at independent manufacture in 1897 with a car powered by a rear mounted twin-cylinder engine and again in 1908 with a vis-à-vis with a front mounted engine). The early years were troubled; Martini moved in 1903 to St Blaise in the canton of Neuchâtel. In 1906 the factory was sold to an Englishman, Deasy, and he in turn handed it over to a group of Swiss bankers in 1908, in which year it was renamed the Société Nouvelle des Automobiles Martini.
The 12/16 had a monobloc engine with overhead inlet valves and shaft drive, features that placed it amongst the most up to date cars of the time. The company again ran into difficult times which it attempted to overcome first by handing over half the shares to the German firm Steiger, then by buying the manufacturing rights to the Wanderer and finally by producing a luxury car entirely designed by Martini. However, nothing succeeded in saving the company and it went into liquidation in 1934.

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Car : Pic-Pic
Year : 1919
Engine : 4 cylinders in line
Bore and stroke :85×130 mm
Cylinder capacity : 2950.5 cc
Gears : 4 forward
Brake horse power : 50
Maximum speed : 60 mph
Wheelbase :10 ft 3 ins (3.12 m)
Suspension : front and rear : semi-elliptic leaf- springs supplemented
by Houdaille hydraulic shock absorbers
The firm’s strange name is made up of the first three letters of the surnames of its two founders (Piccard and Pictet). Initially it only manufactured car parts. In 1904 it was taken over by SAG (Société d’Automobiles à Genéve) whose designer was Marc Birkigt , later to gain fame with Hispano-Suiza. Piccard and Pictet broke away from SAG , becoming fully independent and producing sturdy and efficient cars. The 1919 one pictured here and Argyll’s patented sleeve-valve engine, developing 50 bhp at 1,800 revs, a Zenith carburetor and Scintilla magneto ignition. The dashboard, which had a mileage counter, a clock, an ammeter and a voltmeter, gives an idea of how refined this car was. There was also an instrument which showed the lubricating oil level.
The First World War brought the company many orders due to the sturdiness of its vehicles but in 1920 it began to run into serious difficulties because of competition from imported cars. Pic-Pic finally disappeared in 1924, although in 1922, two years after it had ceased activity for the first time, it was taken over by a new financial group which gave the Swiss firm the go ahead to produce a 4-cylinder 3-litre. However, only 300 of these were sold.

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When ready, the car fully satisfied Adolf Hitler but it was obvious that the price he had set (900 Marks) could not be met. The lowest that it could be kept down to was 990 Marks, this included the cost of two years’ guarantee and maintenance. In actual fact the price finally rose to 1.240 Marks of which 900 were production costs, 200 were two years guarantee and 50 were delivery charges. The car could only be bought for 1,240 Marks by members of the Labour Front. The cost to non-members was in proportion to their income as assessed by the same Labour Front. The delivery or transport charge could be avoided by collecting it directly from the factory. To facilitate this bus services were set up between the country’s major centres and Wolfsburg.
It was also decided that the capital would be put up by the workers themselves through a weekly levy of 5 Marks (or 10 or 15 according to their means). By this method of finance the 336,668 workers raised, through their contributions, no less than 280 million Marks.
On May 26, 1938 Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone of the factory. Then the war broke out and the entire production of the Wolfsburg factory (designed to be 150,000 units per year) went to the Wehrmacht. In fact, Volkswagen did not even produce 60,000 cars and derivatives during the whole war and American military sources place the total at little more than 48,000.

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Cars That Sold a Million

In that period after the Second World War the car ceased to be the status-symbol that it had been in the 1930’s and became a functional object. The American car industry had produced its first million units by 1912;by 1952 it had reached 100,000,000 and in 1971 237,000,000. The annual production is now around 10 million cars. The Italian car industry built 45,800 cars and 3,600 trucks in 1925 (the first year for which there car reliable statistics) and by 1939 it had reached just under 55,000 cars and 13,000 trucks. The first million units were only achieved in 1963, but by 1973, its best year, it produced well over 1,800,000 cars, and including trucks it reached 2,000,000 vehicles.
West Germany, France and the United Kingdom all went through the same process of expansion in car numbers in the post-war period until the energy crisis of 1973. However the greatest phenomenon, the most dramatic expansion in the world’s car industries, had been that of Japan. Starting from nothing in the post-war period, Japan has firmly established itself in second place behind the United States.
It is estimated that at the end of 1975 there were 323,833,000 cars in the world. Of these more than 112,000,000 were in Europe (about 79,000,000 in the EEC countries), over 36,000,000 in Asia, more than 160,000,000 in the Americas (with about 122,000,000 of these in the United States alone) and just over 6,500,000 in Africa.

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Cars That Sold a Million

British Leyland
Morris Minor 1,600,000*
Mini 4,200,000
Land-Rover 1,025,000
Citroën
2 CV A2 3,000,000
Dyane over 1,000,000
Ami 8 1,800,000
GS 1,209,000
DS 1,456,000*
Fiat
1100 2,025,000*
600 2,612,000*
500 3,678,000*
850 2,203,000*
124 1,920,000*
128 2,545,000
127 2,419,000
Ford (Europe)
Anglia 1,083,955*
Taunus 5,900,000
Cortina 3,600,000
Escort 3,200,000
Transit 1,500,000
Mercedes
200-280 1,752,008
Nissan
Skyline (180K/240K) 1,485,293
Bluebird (160B/180B) 3,544,757
Sunny(120Y) 3,704,070

Opel
Rekord 6,011,760
Kadett 4,398,713
Ascona 1,228,760
Peugeot
403 1,300,000*
404 2,450,000**
204 1,600,000*
504 1,800,000
304 1,000,000
Renault
4(1945-61) 1,105,543*
Dauphine 2,120,220*
8 1,329,372*
4 (from 1962) 5,020,721
5 1,731,331
6 1,480,071
12 2,519,459
16 1,743,259
Simca
1000 1,660,309
1100 1,718,847
Toyota
Crown 1,489,742
Cressida 1,492,543
Corona 3,243,595
Celica 1,080,456
Corolla 4,655,668
Vauxhall
Viva 1,529,579
Volkswagen
Beetle 19,137,131
Rabbit 1,450,538
Dasher 1,135,131

Note
In addition to the above figures: 291,705 Crown vans have been built (total inc. cars: 1,781,447); 291,920 Cressida vans (total inc. cars; 1,712,463); 731,773 Corona vans (total inc. cars: 3,975,368); 1,167,627 Corolla vans (total inc. cars: 5,823,295). By June 30, 1977, 712,324 Toyota Publica cars and 579,970 vans had been built making a total of 1,292,294 units. By the same date 147,308 Simca 1100 ‘utilitaires’ and 261,576 ’petites collections’ (cars shipped in pieces and assembled aboard) had been built as well as 257,013 Simca ‘1000’ petites collections.
*production of this model had ceased
**this model is still being produced in Nigeria

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Evolution of the Car Body
The car developed from the horse-drawn carriage and for years its origins were obvious. In the early days motorized carriages were exclusively open. The ‘torpedo’ was the first to offer some protection. This was followed by the ‘limousine’ which introduced the class division between the driver and the passengers. Gradually the body became more and more closely suited to the design requirements of a motor vehicle.
Radiators
Since the first cars, makes have been distinguished by the shapes of their radiators. A good example is the radiator of the Morris Oxford which resembled the nose of a bull, so much so that the car passed into history under the name of the ‘bull-nose’. Many makes of car, such as Rolls-Royce , have never changed the shape of their radiators. Mercedes is another traditionalist, though the radiators on its models have become progressively smaller and have lost their original function.

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Ford also told the public that it had spent $150,000 (a large sum in 1908) on new machines and tools. He also added a passage that, in view of the incredible success later enjoyed by the Model T , seems highly unlikely. A brochure of 1908 states, ‘we do not know how many units of this model will be built in the next 12 months. However, the car’s price has been fixed assuming a production of 25,000’. In fact 15,007,033 Model T’s were produced had nobody would have then believed that this record would one day be broken. Whilst it is true that the car industry has become stronger and capable of producing more and more cars every year, the habit of remodeling and embellishing the body and adjusting the mechanics or, even scrapping a model shortly after putting it into production in order to stimulate the market has become the norm. However, the car industry’s pundits had failed to take account of an ugly and uncomfortable car which Hitler’s régime intended to be known as the ‘people’s car’—the Volkswagen. As the figures show, nearly twenty million have been produced in the course of about thirty years. The Volkswagen was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, who wanted a sturdy car that could seat four people and which, above all, could be sold at a low price in order to motorise his country. The task of producing it was given to Ferdinand Porsche who was very famous as a designer, particularly of racing cars, in both Germany and Europe (although he was Austrian Hitler pretended that Porsche had requested German citizenship).

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The fact that in recent years (from 1969 to 1976) 271,000,000 vehicles have been produced in the world gives an idea of the enormous expansion of the car industry. This development has taken place in the industrially more advanced countries, which have reached densities of one car for every three of four inhabitants, with ever increasing numbers of families that possess two or more cars.
This chapter is concerned with the spread of motor cars throughout the world and it will consider all the models of which more than a million have been built.
It is well known that the first car to exceed this level of production was the Model T Ford. The career of this car has been fully discussed earlier in the book, so here it is sufficient to record that it took two years to design and reach production. It was not for another 70 years that Henry Ford’s record was beaten, when Volkswagen put the Rabbit into production from scratch in eighteen months.
When Ford introduced the T the public were told that it had undergone the most severe tests in all weather conditions (snow in winter, in the mountains during summer, and on sand and on mud). With this sort of presentation Henry Ford was ahead of his time in publicity. Today’s manufacturers still emphasize that the prototypes of a particular model have undergone the same harsh treatments before moving on to the production line.

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Ford also told the public that it had spent $150,000 (a large sum in 1908) on new machines and tools. He also added a passage that, in view of the incredible success later enjoyed by the Model T , seems highly unlikely. A brochure of 1908 states, ‘we do not know how many units of this model will be built in the next 12 months. However, the car’s price has been fixed assuming a production of 25,000’. In fact 15,007,033 Model T’s were produced had nobody would have then believed that this record would one day be broken. Whilst it is true that the car industry has become stronger and capable of producing more and more cars every year, the habit of remodeling and embellishing the body and adjusting the mechanics or, even scrapping a model shortly after putting it into production in order to stimulate the market has become the norm. However, the car industry’s pundits had failed to take account of an ugly and uncomfortable car which Hitler’s régime intended to be known as the ‘people’s car’—the Volkswagen. As the figures show, nearly twenty million have been produced in the course of about thirty years. The Volkswagen was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, who wanted a sturdy car that could seat four people and which, above all, could be sold at a low price in order to motorise his country. The task of producing it was given to Ferdinand Porsche who was very famous as a designer, particularly of racing cars, in both Germany and Europe (although he was Austrian Hitler pretended that Porsche had requested German citizenship).

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