Unsustainable production: conclusions

Ford turned the manufacture of Edwardian vehicles into a mass production process, enabling the mass production of key components and subassemblies. Budd enabled the mass production of car bodies and subsequently the introduction of unibody construction. After the US, Europe adopted Budd all-steel technology, taking the further step of moving to unit construction. This became the new model for mass producing cars, largely emulated elsewhere. We show the impact of these innovations on the world’s oldest car industry, that of France, where we see a combination of, on the one hand, firms that are among the first to embrace the new technologies - Citro'n, and also Renault - and on the other, those who resist for various reasons, notably the manufacturers of traditional ‘grandes routières’. The analysis explains the failure of the latter.