Auto Engineering Feats

When the automobile first appeared twenty-five years ago, it was regarded as a mechanical marvel, though it was a very simple and crude affair. Today the automobile is really a mechanical marvel and nobody is aware of it except a few engineers who know what difficult and complicated problems have been met and solved in producing the up-to-date motor car.

According to George S. Waite, sales manager of the Grant Motor Car corporation of Cleveland, the general public makes a similar mistake in its appraisal of the cars of today, and looks upon the production of a few high priced cars as a much greater manufacturing and engineering feat than the production of large quantities of medium or low priced cars.

"The production of a car like the Grant Six, which is today the lowest priced six in the world, can only be fully appreciated when we stop to realize that between the performance of a six selling for less than $1,000 and a six selling for twice as much, there is probably only a difference of a few percent. In other words, the manufacturer of the lower priced car is expected to deliver a car that is within a few inches as big, within a few miles per hour as fast, and within a few horsepower as powerful as the more expensive car. This does not mean that the higher priced car is not worth every cent that the manufacturer gets for it, but it does mean that it is a much easier car to design and to build because the manufacturer is not handicapped.

"The popular priced car like the Grant Six is the result of scientific management in the widest sense. Its manufacturers must necessarily be far in advance of the ordinary manufacturer in resourcefulness. It would surprise the average manufacturer to learn how far ahead the popular priced car maker has to look and how wide a field he must study and draw on for solution to his problems.

"Until recently the watchmaking industry was the stock example of standardized interchangeable assembling, but the manufacturer of an automobile with twice or three times as many parts as a watch is accomplishing a feat beside which watchmaking is child's play."

--Des Moines Register, Nov. 4, 1917