Helped put the world on wheels and create the American suburbs. When Henry Ford doubled his workers daily wage to $5.00 (in 1913), it meant the people who built the cars could also afford to buy them. A social revolution. Remarkably, some have called it a lemon.
Chrysler's early experiment in building an aerodynamic car that would more efficiently slip through the air was a commercial flop. But the company's use of wind tunnel testing was visionary and is now common practice.
It is hard to imagine that the loveable VW was first designed to be the populist vehicle of the volk of Hitler's Third Reich but the tough little Bug long outlived that ancestry to become the best selling single car model of all time.
The pickup may not win any styling awards but the Ford F150 has been the best selling vehicle in the U.S. for years; the F Series makes Ford about half its sales in the States these days.
In the 1940s Chevvies were something your grandma drove. But in 1955 the General Motors division launched an all new car — the costliest model was dubbed the Bel Air — that was a revelation. Not only did it offer the now legendary small block V8 engine — effectively still in production —its styling, particularly on its Ferrari-like grill, was so wonderful that it was copied for years.
The first car out of Japan to prove that the country was going to be a serious player. Reliable and well finished, it also made economic sense to buy a Civic, which outperformed gas-guzzling American rivals during the oil crises of the 1970s.
The best selling car of all time (across nine generations of models), the Corolla first came to the U.S. in 1968 and did much to overcome Japan's reputation for producing cars of poor quality. Through the years, they have proved sturdy, economical and efficient; they are, however, as boring as all hell.
First car in the world to lie the engine across the vehicle rather than longitudinally. Revolutionary design proved that cars could get smaller —and still be hot. Its technical layout was copied by everybody and is still basically used in today's small cars. Ten feet long with 10 inch wheels, it handled like a dream.
Renault claims that its Espace was the first minivan but it had hinged doors and every soccer mom in the U.S. knows that a proper minivan has sliding doors. And so the honor goes to the Plymouth Voyager, (later the Chrysler Voyager), with the gratitude of overworked parents worldwide as they ferry their kids from school to playdate to grandma's and back home again.
Be it a Jeep Cherokee or a Ford Explorer or supersized to a Humvee, the SUV, whose ancestors were military jeeps, soon became the voracious and luxurious symbol of middle-class and boomer excess in throughout the 1990s — and, by the turn of the century, a potent enemy of the green people once the global warming alarms started going off.
The pioneering hybrid electric/gas run consumer vehicle is no longer the most efficient car in the world, but it is the archetypal green-mobile and still the one with the greatest name recognition.
Launched in January 2008, India's "people's car", as it is already dubbed, is intended to put motoring within reach of Asia's masses. At $2,500 it's hard to see it how it won't sell, but even if it doesn't it will become the poster car for a new, stripped back style of engineering — glue instead of welds! — that could change the world.
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