Before I begin, here's a shocker. It wasn't Ford. If you're thinking the Model T, wrong.
Obama said "the nation that invented the car cannot walk away from it", and the usual detractors are having a field day. So here's the question nobody has yet asked: when is a car a car? What was the first machine invented that we would be able to use as a car? To quote Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC show "Top Gear", a car is a machine laid out in a way that we accept as being normal now.
Steering wheel in front of you. Clutch, brake, throttle. Gear stick as one lever, and a handbrake. And an ignition key (so a starter motor is needed).
Who invented the modern car? The evolution of motorized personal transport, after the fold.
The Benz Patent Motorwagen has been the contraption many have stated as being the first 'car'. Here it is.
It had a bicycle chain, a tiller for steering, and a single front wheel. It was a tricycle with canal boat steering.
The Royal Enfield had four wheels... but handlebar steering. It was a quad with hideously complicated controls!
The De Dion Bouton was so hard to crank-start, seven members of staff at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum in the UK have broken wrists trying to start the car. And it was one of the first cars to sell in reasonably large numbers.
The accelerator was on the steering column. And to change gears, you had to grind it into 2nd when the car was going fast enough in 1st.
And so onto the Model T Ford. By 1927, half the cars in existence were Model T. So you'd think they had the modern configuration.
Nope.
To get it to move: increase the revs using the accelerator (found on the steering wheel). Then move the 'handbrake' (not actually the handbrake, but it's where a handbrake is now) into the middle setting to put the car in neutral. Then depress the left pedal, a kind of dead-man's pedal, to move. To maintain motion, the pedal had to be pushed down all the way, and speed was altered via that steering wheel lever.
To then switch gear: accelerate, push the handbrake all the way forward, then release the dead-man's pedal. So it's only a dead-man's in low gear. The car could then go 40 mph (65 km/h). On wooden wheels. In a world with few roads.
No, the first conventional car was this.
The Cadillac Type 53, from 1916. No, not the thing in front.
Handbrake and gear lever in the middle of the car. Three pedals in the right order. And it was the first car to be started with a key.
As Top Gear itself says, "what we have here is the nub. The first properly modern car."
The Type 53 was only in production for one year, but the layout lives on thanks to the Brits. They copied it for the Austin 7.
The Austin 7 was a vintage car produced from 1922 through to 1939 in the United Kingdom by the Austin Motor Company. It was one of the most popular cars ever produced there and wiped out most other British small cars and cyclecars of the early 1920s, but more importantly it was also licensed and copied by companies all over the world. The first BMW models (BMW Dixi) were licensed Austin 7s, as were the original American Austins. In France they were made and sold as Rosengarts while in Japan Nissan also used the 7 design as the basis for their original cars, though not under license.
We have the Brits to thank for making the modern car's layout popular. Helping make it what it is today. But it was originally created and invented by the Cadillac Automobile Company. It became the template for the modern car. And it's as American as apple pie.
So Obama, as confirmed by the car enthusiasts, was pretty much on the button.
Click here to see the 9'15" video online.