Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market

Trust and Power argues that corporations have faced conflicts with the very consumers whose loyalty they sought. The book provides novel insights into the dialogue between corporations and consumers by examining the car industry during the twentieth century. In the new market at the turn of the century, car manufacturers produced defective cars, and consumers faced risks of physical injuries as well as financial losses. By the 1920s, cars were sold in a mass market where state agencies intervened to monitor, however imperfectly, product quality and fair pricing mechanisms. After 1945, the market matured as most US families came to rely on car transport. Again, the state intervened to regulate relations between buyers and sellers in terms of who had access to credit, and thus the ability to purchase expensive durables like cars.