Developments before World War I large-scale organization The automotive industry in World War II

Rise of the Big Three

At the end of World War I, Ford was the colossus, dominating the automotive scene with the Model T not only in the United States but also through branch plants throughout the world. British Ford was the largest single producer in the United Kingdom. GM was emerging as a potential major competitor in the United States. No other automotive firms of comparable size existed.
During the next decade there was a striking transformation. The depression of 1921 had far-reaching effects on the American automotive industry. GM was plunged into another financial crisis. Alfred P. Sloan became president of the corporation in 1923 and raised it to its unchallenged first place in the industry. Among other steps, he gave GM a staff-and-line organization with autonomous manufacturing divisions, which facilitated management of a large corporate structure and became the model for other major automotive combinations. Henry Ford also went through a crisis because the 1921 crash caught him involved in the construction of a large new plant (River Rouge) and in the process of buying out his stockholders. Ford weathered the storm (though many of his dealers, unable to sell cars and not permitted to return them, went out of business), but the Ford Motor Company had reached its crest.

Walter P. Chrysler
The third member of the “Big Three” automotive manufacturers in the United States was created at this same time. When the Maxwell Motor Company failed in the 1921 depression, Walter P. Chrysler, formerly of General Motors, was called in to reorganize it. It became the Chrysler Corporation in 1925 and grew to major proportions with the acquisition of the Dodge Brothers company in 1928. When Ford went out of production in 1927 to switch from the Model T to the Model A (a process that took 18 months), Chrysler was able to break into the low-priced-car market with the Plymouth.

The independents

By 1929 the Big Three supplied three-fourths of the American market for motor vehicles; most of the remainder was divided among the five largest independents—Hudson, Nash, Packard, Studebaker, and Willys-Overland. In less than 10 years the number of automobile manufacturers in the United States dropped from 108 to 44. Some of the minor carmakers had technological or personal interests, including Nordyke and Marmon, makers of Marmon luxury cars, and E.L. Cord, who marketed front-wheel-drive cars between 1929 and 1937. The depression years of the 1930s eliminated all but the largest independent manufacturers and increased still further the domination of the Big Three. Motor vehicle production declined from a peak of more than five million in 1929 to a low of just over one million in 1932. It rose again slowly but had not returned to the 1929 figure when World War II broke out.
While these years were difficult economically, they saw some significant developments within the industry. Greater emphasis was placed on style in passenger-car design, with the general trend in the direction of incorporating the body, bumpers, and mudguards into a single pattern of smoothly flowing lines. A number of technical features came into general use: the V-8 engine, introduced by Ford in 1932; three-point engine suspension; freewheeling (permitting the car to coast freely when the accelerator was released); overdrive (a fourth forward speed); and, on a limited scale, automatic transmission.