Interruption and Conversion.

Throughout the 1930s American automobile producers had been moving toward a longer, sleeker, and lower design for cars. But such developments were interrupted in 1941 when the U.S. automobile industry was assigned a leading role in the American war effort. As a result, factory production of civilian cars virtually stopped. The automobile industry converted from manufacturing cars to producing tanks, jeeps, trucks, aircraft parts, marine engines, radios, refrigerators, torpedo parts, and anti-aircraft guns to arm the United States and its allies.

A Reluctant Ford.

Henry Ford, designer of the Model T and founder of one of the country's biggest automobile companies, opposed U.S. involvement in European hostilities from their outbreak in the late 1930s. Ford, who had grown more and more suspicious of his rival automakers over the years, wanted nothing to do with...