|
|
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
In stock now. | $45.00 |
|
James M. Laux's IN FIRST GEAR tells the story of the French automobile industry from its inception until the onset of World War I. During this period France led the world in automobile design and manufacture, both in terms of innovation and production. Paris was a hotbed of enthusiasm for this new horseless carriage, with a large and affluent leisure class that embraced auto racing with a particular passion. This spurred the development of large numbers of automobile entrepreneurs with a constant drive (as it were) to improve their product. Laux closely examines forty-five of these early car-manufacturing companies from their methods of production to their marketing strategies. He believes that there persists a myth that the French economy of the time was "languid", but that the explosion of the automobile industry is clear evidence to the contrary.
After 1914, the French automobile industry would be eclipsed by those of other countries. Laux indicates that this is due to a failure to mass produce; the assembly-line and interchangeable parts were ideas that were slow to come to companies that built their cars largely by hand, as precision instruments for wealthy patrons, not the mass market. Laux believes that there was an untapped mass market for these machines in France during this period, but that the French auto-makers failed to capitalize on it.
