Evolution car body

Cars That Sold a Million

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.