@SalenaZito I have heard of the Karns Runabout, but the story of him losing out to Henry Ford for a govt loan in 1901 is completely fanciful. Ford secured all his financing privately, as did every US auto manufacturer until Chrysler in 1979.
@SalenaZito Henry Ford founded 3 car companies; first the Detroit Automobile Co in 1899. It was dissolved in 1901, after producing only a few cars. All financing was from Detroit lumber baron WH Murphy.
@SalenaZito After building a race car that he drove to victory over the then much more famous Alexander Winton in 1901, Ford easily secured investors for company #2, The Henry Ford Co. WH Murphy was among them, despite the earlier failure.
@SalenaZito Ford's 2nd company also failed, and investors brought in Henry Leland (later the founder of General Motors) to run it; Ford was fired, and the company was renamed... Cadillac.
@SalenaZito Oddly enough Leland left GM in 1917 after a dispute with fellow GM founder William Durand, and started the luxury car company Lincoln. It floundered, and Henry Ford (by that time richest man in the world) bought it from Leland in 1922, getting revenge for 1902.
@SalenaZito After The Henry Ford Co died in 1902, Ford built another race car, "Old 999," which he drove to a world speed record of 91 mph. This again led to investors funding the Ford Motor Co in 1903, proving the proverbial "third time's a charm."
@SalenaZito The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 with $28,000 in capital, from only 8 investors (2 of them being the Dodge Brothers). There was enough excitement about the car biz in 1900 that neither Ford nor any other company needed govt financing.
@SalenaZito Rather than early car companies dying from lack of govt financing, truth is almost the opposite. Probably 100 "car companies" never made a car, and were mainly a front to bilk frenzied investors eager to get in on the bottom floor of the automobile craze.
@SalenaZito Ford didn't invent the first car, he invented the affordable car; his chief genius was in the economies of scale of the assembly line. He honed that as plant foreman for the Edison factory in Detroit, making light bulb manufacturing more efficient.
@SalenaZito Anyhoo, while I take delight in obscure car makes and mourn their demise, that's the way capitalism works. Karns, like 500 or so other early car companies, didn't fail because they lacked capital; they lacked capital because they failed.
