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come up with ideas on their own. Throughout the 1920s car companies made a lot of prototype cars . These were vehicles that were intended to go into production. The cars were built and road tested. Bugs were resolved. Design plans were refined and eventually the car was sent into production. Concept cars are something different. They are meant to showcase a range of ideas that could be incorporated into other cars, but these cars themselves are not meant to go into production. Why don’t these cars go into production if they’re so great? Because the assembly line production of these kinds of cars would be so expensive that the car would have a high price tag and probably wouldn’t sell well. Some

As some carmakers like Ford and General Motors (GM) grew and grew, others with names like Auburn and Apple (yes, there was a short-lived car company called Apple around 1915) folded or were bought up by the bigger companies. Usually, a big car company would buy a smaller car company because of a new innovation. GM bought Oldsmobile because Ransom Olds, the founder, had developed an assembly line system at least as good as Henry Ford’s. After a couple of decades of gobbling smaller car companies, the large automakers were in a position where they had to

Concept cars are meant to showcase a range of ideas that could be incorporated into other cars.

General Motors bought Oldsmobile in large part because founder Ransom Olds had developed an assembly line that rivaled that of Ford’s (seen here).

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