[anamax]

> But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy.

Actually, it has. Large scale production may have usually been in a factory, but often that factory was small production multiplied. Ford and the like were anomalies, even in the car biz.

> You could never start a car factory in a garage

I don't know about you, but literally thousands of folks did exactly that.

[marshray]

This is an interesting claim, do you have any links or citations?

[anamax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cars

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_brands . Australia is sort of interesting as is Britain.

[marshray]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_manufacturers_of_th...

OK, that's probably 700+ manufacturers after duplicates are counted for. Which is great!

But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original criteria of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories". Spot-checking the links from Wikipedia turns up several references to converted bicycle and motorcycle factories. No references to "two guys in a garage" which kinda makes sense considering garages probably came after the early automobiles. :-)

No doubt some of them started in barns, but again, I don't think that was a huge part of the economy.

[anamax]

The all in one list doesn't include the countries that had lots of car companies, such as the US. US only list (which was the biggest) has over 1800, from 1896 to 1930.

The US wikipedia entry claims that very few car companies were started after 1930. I know a couple from the 60s that didn't make the list which were literally a couple of guys in a garage. No, they weren't casting their own engine blocks but neither does Lotus for some of their models.

> But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original criteria of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories".

Most made very few cars so it's unlikely that they had significant factories.

> I don't think that was a huge part of the economy.

There were two separate claims. The first was that small scale manufacturing was a significant part of manufacturing. I haven't addressed that.

The second was that lots of car companies had almost nothing in the way of "factory". That's the claim that I've supported.