W hen the twentieth century began, such automobile manufac-
turing as existed in the United States was predominantly a sideline to other
industrial operations. Only a handful of companies was engaged specifically
in making motor carriages. Not only was the American automobile industry
still minute in stature, it was also inferior in technology to contemporary
European development. With all due respect for the ingenuity of the Amer-
ican pioneers, much of their effort was needless and some of it was misdi-
rected. Frederick L. Smith, of the Olds Motor Works, describes American
automobile manufacturing when he became associated with it in this way:

While our engineers were wrestling with mechanical problems long ago
solved in Europe, our designers were mistakenly but tenaciously trying to
follow the general lines of horsedrawn vehicles. . . . In a few instances some
bold spirits did break away from carriage designs . . . but in every case they
went inevitably to the glorified tri- or quadri-cycle idea, narrow gauge tubu-
lar frames, and wire wheels, mostly influenced, of course, by the bicycle era
then going into its decline. ¹

Some early American car bodies, indeed, followed the carriage pattern so
closely that they came equipped with whip sockets--not an entirely useless
accessory in view of the strong likelihood that the contraption was sooner
or later going to have to be pulled out of trouble by a horse!

Meanwhile, the basic design of the modern gasoline automobile had been
worked out in the early 1890's by the French engineer Emile Constant
Levassor, whose firm of Panhard and Levassor possessed the French rights
to Daimler's patents.

The entry of Panhard and Levassor, originally makers of woodworking
machinery, into automobile manufacturing is a story worth telling, even
at the cost of a slight digression from American automotive development.
The patent rights were secured from Daimler in 1888 by a Belgian friend

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