It’s Always Time to be Thankful!

Thanksgiving is tomorrow!  It’s the time of the year we get to spend with friends, family, and others, sharing the things for which we are the most thankful!  Even better, it means some much needed off time for work.  For that, I’m also thankful!

 

By the way… I understand that not everyone has off for the holidays, and I do want to extend a special “Thank you” to those people who have to work.  My wife has been a nurse for almost four years now, and she’s one of those people that has had to work through the bigger holidays of the year.  I did as well when I worked in retail.  Even though I don’t have to do that now, I understand.

 

Anyway… with all this thanks going around, I also want to extend my own personal thanks to those people, places, and things that have made the automotive industry what it is today.  That brings us to our special Thanksgiving article.  Without further ado, here’s my list of the 10 things within the automotive industry that I’m most thankful for.

Airbags/Seat belts

Not everybody wears seat belts, but they should.  Some see them as a pain, but I grew up buckling up every single time I sat down in a car seat.  When it’s a habit, it’s not that much of a pain, but more importantly, they save lives.  Airbags do as well.  In case you haven’t noticed, the dashboard of a car is pretty hard.  The steering wheel is just about as hard, and it sticks out farther than the dashboard does.  Volvo claims the first real attempt at a seat belt as we know it, and they’ve offered them in their cars since the 1960’s.  Airbags were available but not made mandatory on all vehicles until the late 1990’s.  If that seems fairly recent, it is.  I couldn’t believe it either when I was doing my own research.  At any rate, we have them now, and I’m really glad that we do.

 

Golf GTI

In one of my previous articles, I claimed that the Golf GTI is the perfect car, and possibly the best car ever made.  I still hold to that, but it’s also the reason why we have any hot hatches today.  The Golf GTI is the reason for the “Hot Hatch Craze” that exploded in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and consequently, it’s the grandfather of every hot hatch today.  Think about it… Without Volkswagen’s ingenuity, we wouldn’t have ever seen a Peugot 205 GTI, Mazdaspeed 3, or Ford Focus RS.  What a sad world!  It’s a good thing we actually did have the GTI to pave the way.

 

Lamborghini Miura

Like the GTI, the Miura was a specific car that set the bar for everything that came after it.  The Miura was really just an extra-curricular project for some guys that worked for Lamborghini in 1964.  It’s shape was incredibly futuristic.  Not only that, but the Miura had a V-12 engine that was mounted right behind the driver.  At the time, it was revolutionary.  Today, that’s pretty normal for a supercar and even some sports cars, but what was previously a after-hours project became the template for everything that we have today.  You’re welcome Ferrari, Pagani, Mclaren, Toyota, De Tomaso…  and the list goes on.

 

Turbochargers

Want more power?  Slap a turbo on it!  Want more efficiency from small displacement engine?  Put a turbo on it!  Trying to equip a four-cylinder engine in a 5000 pound SUV?  Add a turbo!  The turbo is the friend of enthusiasts and the EPA alike.  Unlike a supercharger which borrows power from the engine itself, a turbo uses a by-product of the engine, exhaust gases, to power it.  To this day, it’s generally regarded as the easiest and sometime cheapest way to gain significant power increases from an engine.  General Motors was the first to use a turbo on a production car, and we have to say “Thanks!”

 

Henry Ford

Ford was an extraordinary man.  Quite often, and wrongfully so, he’s credited with inventing the automobile.  That honor goes to Karl Benz, and to him, we’re also most definitely grateful!  To Henry Ford, we have to say “thank you” for the assembly line.  Everyone knows how important and revolutionary the Model T was in the early 1900’s.  It was the common man’s car, the first affordable automobile for the general public.  The reason that’s the case is because of Henry Ford’s assembly line.  More Model T’s were able to be produced because they could be made quickly and efficiently, thus lowering the price of the otherwise rather pricey automobile.  We’ve come a long way since then, but we also wouldn’t be where we are today without Ford.

 

Japanese Automakers

Japanese cars are generally known for their reliability.  That’s because, generally speaking, they were and continue to be reliable.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Japan was importing small, inexpensive –dare I say, cheap – cars to America, such as the Toyota Carolla and Honda Civic.  Nissan also produced cars for the American market by way of their Datsun models, the 510 and iconic 240Z.  All of this would prove to be instrumental in securing their permanent place in the American consumer market because of the oil crisis in 1973.  All the Japanese cars that came to America fit the needs of the common American overnight.  The domestic manufacturers were ill-prepared to deal with the crisis.  Not only were the Japanese imports economical, but they worked.  As cheap as they were, they were also fairly bulletproof, which is also something that couldn’t be said of many other cars at the time.  It made us sit up and pay attention to what could be.

 

ABS

A car with an anti-lock braking system doesn’t make it stop faster than a car without ABS, but it does give the driver the ability to steer the car during braking.  The ability to control a 3500 pound car that has to stop quickly is a great thing.  ABS is standard on cars today, so we take it for granted all too often.  I would even venture to say, that many people reading this right now have never tried to stop a car without it!  I would suggest trying it once.  If you do that though, make sure you’re far enough away from everyone else so you don’t jeopardize anybody’s safety.  ABS, as we know it today, didn’t really become widely used until the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Even then, there were a lot of cars that had ABS only on one set of brakes.  We’re really glad to have it everywhere today.  Anytime you have control of your car, especially when you have to stop, it’s a good day!

 

Muscle Cars

I know what you’re thinking.  Muscle cars aren’t nearly as important as seatbelts and airbags… which is true.  They don’t hold as much historical significance as the Volkswagen Golf GTI or the Lamborghini Miura… which is mostly true depending on who you ask.  The GTI had broader global implications and the Miura basically set the template for every single modern supercar.  The muscle car did one thing very well.  It became an integral part of American car culture.  It became the cornerstone of the automotive industry in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Even the fuel crisis in the 1970’s couldn’t fully kill the muscle car.  Depending on who you talk to, the Pontiac GTO is widely regarded as the first true muscle car.  Quite frankly, we don’t care which car started the muscle car craze.  The fact is that they were cool, people couldn’t get enough of them, and they symbolized perfectly what America was and in many ways, what America still is.  We’re thankful for the smiles they brought and the noise they make.  They’re still cool, they’re still sought after, and if you own one, I envy you.

 

Electric Ignition

Back in the day, to start your engine, you’d have to use a hand crank.  Those were the days right?  Thankfully, the hand crank start method wasn’t that long lived as the possibility to start the engine electrically came about by 1912.  That doesn’t mean that every single car didn’t have a hand crank and choke after that, but at least the invention of an electric system on a car spread some hope and joy to those whose arms were falling off just trying to get their car started.  An electric system first appeared on a Cadillac as a push button start… imagine that!  General Motors was actually the first to add a lot of revolutionary features on their cars throughout the years, and they got this one as well.  Thanks again, GM!

 

Windshield Wipers

Such a simple thing to solve a really big problem.  The fact is… it rains.  Now we have that stuff to put on the windshield that makes the rain bead up and slide off the glass.  Even then, wipers are really useful.  Imagine a car without them!  Wipers have gone through quite a few changes from what they were to what they are now.  At first, they were all completely manual.  The very first windscreen wipers were invented in 1902.  It wasn’t until 1917 that wipers became somewhat automated by a vacuum driven by the manifold.  Wipers as we know them today didn’t really come about until the 1960’s.

 

That’s the end of my list.  I know that I didn’t list everything, and if I did, I might be here for a while.  I could put more things on the list like windshields, heat and air conditioning, and the automatic transmission, but I have to stop at ten for now.  Maybe some other time, I will share another top ten list of more things I’m thankful for.  Let me know some of the things you are most thankful for in the automotive industry!

–SWF

 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!