Re: old design was oilheads-digest V 1 #47

[Steve Makohin <wateredg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/7/04 10:24 AM, rennsport@xxxxxxxxx rennsport@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>On Wednesday, Jan 7, 2004, at 09:54 US/Eastern, Steve Makohin wrote:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> I'd imagine (don't have any data to support my belief), not too many. 
>> But
>> just as Henry Ford wasn't in the horse-drawn buggy building business
>> before he dipped his toe in the "horseless carriage" pond, there is no
>> doubt that early automotive designs were heavily influenced by the
>> carriages that preceded them.
>
>Yes but the automobile gets its roots from the horse-drawn buggy and 
>carriage because of how the early auto industry was set up. Most 
>companies built and sold a rolling chassis and the customer would pick 
>the coach builder for the body he wanted on the car. The coach builders 
>who use to build buggies and carriages for horses had moved into the 
>body building business. That is why you will find wood and fabric still 
>being used (mostly for the interiors) in old cars because that is the 
>material they were most accustomed to.
[...]

My possibly incorrect understanding is that exceptionally few horse-drawn 
coach builders became automobile manufacturers, though a few dabbled in 
some experimentation. Rather, the majority of people who started 
manufacturing automobiles, like Henry Ford, were NOT originally 
horse-drawn coach builders. None the less, they were still heavily 
influenced by the horse-drawn coaches of the time when designing their 
vehicles.

To bring this back into the context of my previous posting about 
motorcycles, it lends "credence" to the Guggenheim Museum's statements 
that the differences in motorcycle styles favored in North America versus 
Europe were influenced by the riding styles of the horsemen that preceded 
them in the respective geographies, even though there is no evidence that 
those horsemen actually became motorcycle manufacturers.

- -Steve

 Oakville, Ontario, Canada
 2000 R1100S/ABS, Mandarin

------------------------------