Bryan Appleyard
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
One of the key flaws was that if you have men doing one thing at a time, Occasionally they'll do it wrong and it would go to the end of the line and you'd have to take the car and put it all right. So all these Ford type production systems had a sort of room beyond the production line where they were putting cars right. He saw this as catastrophic and stupid.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And he designed that out by saying any worker working on the line who saw a mistake or a fault could stop the entire line. Which sounds like craziness, because you'd think that has reduced production. But of course it didn't, because you had to work out why exactly it had stopped, what had gone wrong, get it right, so it would never go right and wrong again.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Whereas the Fordian system was reproducing the same errors, but just fixing them at the end. That's a huge change. Combined with this other change, which was that Ford just got his stuff delivered or manufactured it himself at River Rouge, and just chucked it into the bins where the workers were working. But Ono said, no, no, we're not paying for all that stock.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
We're just going to make sure that the things arrive just in time. So he created the just-in-time production system. Now, it took a while for it to work. The problem was that Americans were resistant to non-Detroit cars or non-American cars generally.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And the only car that was making any inroads was the German Volkswagen Beetle, and it was being bought by young people who regarded it as deviant, eccentric, wicked, you know, because they bought this car. But it was a groovy car. When it really got going, everybody wanted one. And that was a sign, a warning that Detroit should have noticed, but it didn't, or it decided to ignore it.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And along came the Japanese. First of all, they started to invade the market in the 50s and 60s and make serious inroads thereafter. And this appealed to young people because young people were increasingly anti-corporate in those days. So they thought, we'll stick it to the man in Detroit and buy a Japanese car. And again, the Detroit didn't believe it at first.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
They couldn't believe this was happening. But these were good cars, you know, and they weren't spectacular cars. They were just good. They worked. They lasted.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
They made a big mistake, Ford and General Motors. They thought, you see, if you built a big car, you could then persuade the customers to buy it, and then you could put on all these extras, so the car comes out a lot more expensive.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Now, when they analyzed a way of doing a small car, they decided it wasn't worth it because they'd have to make sort of 10 or 20 small cars to make the profit they did on one heavily loaded Chevrolet. And so they made the mistake of thinking a small car simply wasn't possible for them. But people did want small cars. They're easy to drive around towns. They don't consume as much gas.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Increasingly, they showed it by buying them.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
To me too. I think the era of the car as we know it is coming to an end. I think this process will accelerate and we won't be seeing internal combustion cars. I don't know whether they'll be electric cars replacing the hydrogen, but one or the other. And we're also seeing increasing computer intervention in the driving conditions. We already have that. I mean, it's very interesting.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
If you look at a car, it's becoming more like an iPhone. An iPhone works because it doesn't work unless you're connected to something. And it's becoming like that with cars. I mean, Tesla now doesn't even have to ask you about changing the software. It just drops it in from the cloud. Now, so far, the attempt to make them self-driving is stalled.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
They're not really getting very far with it at the moment. And it's much more complicated than they realized. And it's risky because people get killed. But I have no doubt that the kind of money that has been put in this will produce something very different to what we now know. And that will happen quite quickly.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And also, if you look at the way both Apple and Google, about the same time, started work on a self-driving car, Now, there's a reason for that. They're the richest companies in the world. They're all in Silicon Valley. It's not in Detroit. It's not in the old world. It's in the new world. So basically, these vast tech companies stuffed full of money want to move into this area.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And it's not just the cars. They'll change cities. They'll put in cloud control of cars and cities as a whole.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
so yeah it's changing and you know i can see why people would say that's a good thing and in a sense i accept all their arguments cars have killed a lot of people they kill about 1.3 million people a year um they do cause problems for the environment and for our health i understand all that i accept all that but i don't think you should allow those negatives to overrule the great positives that car brought to people they brought freedom on a scale unimaginable before
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Honda is the name you know on your cars, but the man was just extraordinary. He was the only businessman, Japanese businessman, American businessman, thought they could get on with. This was because he was a bit of a party animal, and he didn't have that reserve that Japanese businessmen seemed to have about them. He was pretty wild.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
He developed motorcycles, brilliant motorcycles, moved into cars, developed increasingly brilliant cars. He was, I think, probably the greatest of all the mainstream car makers as an engineer. He made the most beautiful fast car, the Honda NSX, which everybody I know, the experts I know, and Gordon Murray is one of the greatest fast car designers in the world.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
This changed his life when he drove this car, not because it was faster than anything else, because it just handled. Murray went on to build the most expensive car in the world. McLaren, and he owed it all to Honda, because he just saw how Honda did it. He was a great engineer. I was just fascinated by it.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
There was something about the man. He was perfectly placed. He came from a farming family. He hated horses, which was quite crucial actually. And he took great pride in ridding the world of the need for horses.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, yeah, they say about things like the steer up on the horse and things like that quite commonly. But what they miss out from what the car did was the absolute physical change it brought to the world. It created roads. It created motels. It created interstates. The physical world has been changed by the car.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, there's some dispute about this, but an official story has emerged that the first one was built in 1885 by Carl Benz. who was an engineering genius, but he wasn't a public relations genius. And what made him a public relations genius was his wife, Bertha Ringer, or Bertha Benz. And she borrowed his car and drove 66 miles south in Germany with her children, which was astonishing.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
No other vehicle. had done more than a mile or two at the time. Now that made it sort of the official narrative, but there are lots of close to actual cars at that time.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Absolutely they do, but not at the beginning they didn't. The car was developed in Germany and France mainly in the late 19th century. It wasn't really American at all. The Americans probably needed it more than anybody because it's a very big country and it had the most appalling roads in the world at the time. There was a lot of...
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
about what was the best propulsion method for the car in America. Was it steam, electric, or gas, as you would call it? And it really took hold. First of all, it was the Oldsmobile, which is a nice little car. It didn't really take off as well as it should have done. But it did catch people's eye. It was called the curved dash Oldsmobile.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
This is because a dashboard in those days did not mean what we mean now. It meant the wood, piece of wood in front of a carriage to stop the muck kicked up by the horses in front hitting the passengers. So he made a car with a...
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
dashboard that was curved rather than flat that's all so it's its least interesting feature really but that it became known as the curve dash old boltonville and so a song with a famous song was written about it my merry oldsmobile But the real change came in 1908 when Henry Ford launched his Model T. After that point, America took over the world car business.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Well, it's an interesting question. And it may be just because it had to be somewhere. But what happened was the engineers and people at Ford went to that city. It was a kind of a city ready for industrialization. And the key thing was that Ford started building his Model T in a tiny warehouse in Detroit and then built two huge industrial complexes, the biggest the world had ever seen.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And that meant it was going to be Detroit. And General Motors came out later and so on. And it was all in Detroit. It's just a kind of crucial place.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
He hated horses, which was quite crucial, actually. And he took great pride in ridding the world of the need for horses. So he took to engineering on his own, off his own bat. He didn't really have an education in engineering. He just suddenly saw this little machine that was used to drive farming machinery. And he became obsessed with it, how it worked, what it did.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And he started building it himself. And then gradually, he became aware that people were actually making cars out of this machine. He did it. But then there was something about the man that was unbelievably concentrated. So for example, when he actually started work, he built several cars that were quite successful. He became known as a big car maker.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
But at some point, he realized that something was missing from the car. What he realized was that the car had to be for everybody. He wanted to make a cheap, reliable, easily serviceable car. And he concentrated all his mind on this. He did it in a special room in Detroit.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
The most important thing was possibly his use of vanadium steel, which is a special kind of steel that had been discovered in Britain, I think, first. But then he found it. You can make very light cars out of this stuff. And he believed in lightness, like some people believe in God. You know, it's just lightness in an automobile to him was the most important thing. And it cracked it.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It coped with the bad American roads by making this wonderfully ingenious suspension system that meant, you know, probably a good condition Model T. would be better at going over bad roads now than a modern SUV. It had a special system for holding the engine in place so that the twisting of the suspension didn't damage the engine. It was a beautiful little thing.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
And it started out quite cheap, and then it got cheaper still. He kept pushing down the price. And amazingly, he made ever more money out of it.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
Yes and no. It came out of thought processes from others about how you best made people work more efficiently and quicker. And other people had had these ideas. But what he did was simplify the process so that every workman on the line would do one job. And he did do that all day. It made it very, very efficient.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
The problems were later to emerge from this, which is later story was that the Japanese made it better. But nobody had ever seen anything like this. Could produce millions of cars very easily. And they flooded out of the factory. They were such an extraordinary, they changed politics. Both Stalin and Hitler admired Henry Ford for what he did.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
in other words both ends of the political spectrum and they admired him because to them this seemed like a new world a new way of organizing humanity it was a new politics in a way
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
There was a sort of monstrous simplicity of the man. He was easily influenced. Towards the end of his life, he was thinking of handing over the company to not to his son, whom he didn't regard as that competent, but to somebody called Harry Bennett, who's a low-life thug. He beat up people who protested against working conditions and things. He was a low-life thug.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
It was only because Clara, his wife, was so revolted by the idea they stopped him.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
well there were two people both utterly different the the big one the big name was alfred sloan and sloan and ford were the two opposites in the in the car business and sloan was so boring to meet i mean he was catastrophically boring i mean it still is because if you look at wikipedia he's got about third the length of ford's
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
entry people can't find anything interesting to say about him this was because he was concealed himself from the world he he had something to hide i don't know what it was but he certainly wanted to hide himself uh paralyzingly boring when if you can look up youtube videos of him and he talks as if you know like an undertaker on a bad day um but he had perversely
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
His idea, he wasn't boring in his idea, which was the way to sell cars was to market them. Ford sort of did market cars, but he did it on the assumption that if you told your customer about the Model T, they would buy it. You know, if you build it, they will come. And he was right for a long time. But after 1920...
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
the end of the 20s, he stopped producing the Model T and never came up with anything to compete with it. And as a result, General Motors became the big competitor for Ford. And it did so by marketing. He got in, Sloan got in, Harley Earl, who built most extravagant cars imaginable, the opposite of Ford's puritanical small cars, light, small, everything. The opposite.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
He just built massive, heavy cars that we all, by the time they got into the 50s, we all recognized them, the great Cadillacs and so on. Absurd cars with gigantic wings at the back, which made no sense sort of in engineering terms. But they would, because people, as Ford also introduced planned obsolescence so that, you know, he would build a new car model every year.
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
model of the same car every year which had very little difference but he would say you had to have the new car and people had if the people saw their neighbors had the new car they then went out and bought one themselves so he created a marketing system which is kind of like the parallel of Ford's production system but applied to marketing and it was just hugely successful but it didn't produce great cars
Something You Should Know
The Car’s History and Future & Inside Your Unconscious Mind – SYSK Choice
There was a brilliant, brilliant Japanese engineer called Taichi Ohno. And he was working for Toyota, as it was called now, and later Toyota, because Westerners found it easier to pronounce. And he developed a new production system based upon Ford's production system, Ford and General Motors production systems. But when he looked at the production system, he could see all these flaws.