[zucchini_head]

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened.

Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around 30-40 years to recover.

That's why the USA auto industry declined on an enormous scale after the 80's, because in the end the USA was never automobile king. There was never the "good old Detroit days". It was just a temporary market vacuum that the USA capitalised on, while Germany and Japan, who simply were better at making cars (debatable of course, but they make more money and that's probably the most reliable metric here), were rebuilding their entire country from catastrophe.

[JoeAltmaier]

Hm, doesn't seem to add up. Flattened countries were not buying cars - so the foreign market for US cars would actually go down post-war? As for reduced competition - how many foreign cars did America import before the war? We're talking the excess capacity of pre-WWII Germany - a depressed economy (the indirect cause of WWII) which couldn't have been much.

I'd credit an increased US appetite for goods, a huge influx of trained workers (trained by the military for war purposes) and a excess war-related manufacturing capacity turned to domestic goods with the prices reduced by volume manufacturing.

All of which could be called "because the US won".

[zucchini_head]

Yes but was the decrease in demand greater in magnitude than the increase in sales due to less competition? I'de disagree, but getting numbers on these things is very difficult since it's a long time ago. Most of what you'll get is "general ideas" that the industry was "fairly big/small".

[JoeAltmaier]

Agreed. Which puts the claim that 'decreased competition in markets from flattened economies of the losers helped American manufacturing', in an equally foggy light.

[zucchini_head]

Hmm, i've definitely heard that story about decreased competition being a factor in USA post-war prosperity, but I seem to have been misinformed, since after looking at [1], it was due to a lot of things - namely increased fertility and farmers learning how to do more economically valuable jobs - but not from them winning the war.

What's very sad is when you read a little further on about the USA economic decline after 1970 to today...

Anyway thank you for letting me know I was being a dingus!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United...

[kasey_junk]

Were the Japanese auto manufacturers a large player prior to the war? I thought the domestic production there was essentially nothing before the ramp up to war in the 30s.

[zucchini_head]

I'de say it was rather large, since looking around, it's believed that it was very big pre-WWiII, but a quick look for numbers isn't revealing any good sources. I suppose it'll just have to float around as a "general belief" that the Japanese automotive industry was "rather big" pre-WWII.

WWII definitely effected the US less than a lot of countries though that is for sure. But I think certain industries benefited more from USA's post-war advantage than others (automotive maybe being an example).

[maxerickson]

Japan was not a big player in the global auto marketplace prior to World War II.

Toyota had made less than 2000 vehicles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_AA#Toyota_passenger_car...

Neither was Germany. Hitler started pushing the people's car in 1934 or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932.E2.80.931938:_...

They were building nice cars in Germany, they just weren't building a lot of them.

Meanwhile Ford had produced ~15 million Model Ts and 4 million Model As prior to 1932 (when production of the Model A was stopped).

[ionwake]

Simple and a great point thank you

[dsfyu404ed]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271608/global-vehicle-sa...

http://www.jato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/JATO-Global-C...

GM VAG and Toyota all have similar shares of the global market. Depending on how you want to nitpick you can make The Americans, Germans or Japanese look like the dominant player in global vehicle sales but it's really too global of an industry to draw the lines based on the country the CEO's office happens to be in.

[zucchini_head]

Firstly the linked source is paywalled so that's ignored.

Secondly, we are talking about post-war USA, so very generally '45 -> circa '70, not 2016 and the modern globalised world that are not representative of the world back then where even the internet didn't exist.

[dsfyu404ed]

It wasn't paywalled via google.