!897 -- a low-priced automobile for the common man, and not the rich

Conventional automotive history asserts that only Americans Ransom Olds, Billy Durant, and Henry Ford recognized that the vast potential market for the horseless carriage comprised of farmers and not simply a niche segment consisting of the well-to-do and urban elite.

For example, see my 2nd edition, pp.47-8: "While most of the early pioneers in the automobile industry in America thought of their cars as leisure objects for the well to do, only Ford, Ransom Olds, and Billy Durant thought differently. This triumvirate found ways to meet the demand from a mass consumer market that desired to break the bonds of place."

The idea of a mass market for a low-priced vehicle was voiced as early as 1897. Making it happen took production technology resulting in economies of scale and organizational strategies leading to vertical and horizontal integration.

Front Page of the Xenia (Ohio) Daily Gazette, July 13, 1897

HORSELESS VEHICLE IS COMING- PRETTY SOON

And They Say Will Be Within Reach of All 

Said Captain Mattox in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.  Horseless carriages at $100 each or less is the hope now held out to those who would ride -- motor vehicles for the masses and every man his own motorman. 

Experiments have been in progress in that city which have brought forth the announcement that the market is soon to be flooded with horseless carriages at a price that will bring them within the reach of everybody. 

Every man or woman who is now able to own a bicycle will soon be able to own an automobile road cart or a landau or a victoria for the use of themselves, their families and friends. They will need no stable in which to keep horses, no hostler, no hay rack or harness.