Why did Ford Scrap all These Cars?

[Briann]

 

[Rusty_OToole]

In the early days of making cars hardly anybody had one. But by the mid 1920s there were 17.5 million cars registered in the US. This led to a big problem for car dealers, who had to take used cars as trade ins in order to sell new cars, then often got stuck with the used cars that no one wanted. There were just too many of them.

 

Ford's answer to the used car problem was to take them off his dealers' hands and scrap them, recycling the steel, brass etc into new Fords. I don't know how long this program lasted but the use of a percentage of scrap steel in the production of new steel, has been common practice ever since.

[human-potato_hybrid]

Basically the same as if Ford paid people $1000 to trade in their rusty 200k mile '98 Ford Taurus if they buy a new Bronco.

 

It's worth remembering that 99% of what they were scrapping were thoroughly worn out cars that if not scrapped would have ended up as some parted out heap in a field somewhere before not much longer. Not anything that had a chance of lasting through the decades.

[Oz Dodge 4]

1 hour ago, human-potato_hybrid said:

 

It's worth remembering that 99% of what they were scrapping were thoroughly worn out cars that if not scrapped would have ended up as some parted out heap in a field somewhere before not much longer. Not anything that had a chance of lasting through the decades.

Ford did it for economics and "economics only"! They didn't want a large supply of cheap cars in their new car market competing with them ! Just remember that a large percentage of those "thoroughly worn out cars" like they were scrapping were repaired all through the depression era when few could afford to replace them, then they had to be repaired again through the war years when domestic car production was stopped with a lot surviving until the early 50s when some normalcy returned to the market, some twenty years after that film clip was made. In 1929 Ford had a lot of market "power" and Henry liked to use it!

[Jim Skelly]

I remember Dad saying how new car dealers would take an old car as a trade-in and damage the flywheel so the car could not be driven, thus reducing the supply of used cars.  The trade-in price wouldn't have been much.  It sounds bizarre today since there is a market for cars at all price points. 

[human-potato_hybrid]

1 hour ago, Oz Dodge 4 said:

were repaired all through the depression era when few could afford to replace them

Yes, just like how people were repairing 25 year old 200k mile cars during COVID, but it's the exception to the rule now as then.

[JV Puleo]

GM did the same thing with Cadillac ... A dealer could get reimbursed by the company if he smashed  the engine block and junked the car. I was told that by Bill Gregory of Bills Auto Parts, a character several members here will remember. His junk yard was a treasure trove of pre-war stuff going back to when he started it in the late 20s.

[58L-Y8]

The glut of used car junkers reached such high points at various times that manufacturers and dealers participated in junking programs, another occurred during the 1938 recession.  Not only to recycle the materials, but also in an effort to bolster new car sales as the worst of the worn-out cars were removed from the bottom of the market.

[TTR]

Basically for same reason hundreds of thousands of cars/trucks/etc are scrapped every day around the globe (& pointed out already by others), ECONOMICS.

Besides, just think of the horrors if all the cars ever produced were still cluttering the above water surfaces of this planet.

[Hemi Joel]

Cars became very obsolete, very fast in that era due to rapidly advancing technology. They also wore out so much faster than they do today. Plus there were so many cars that the manufacturers had gone out of business and there was little to no parts support. That made these cars worth little to nothing at the time. 

There was nothing sinister or deceitful in Henry Ford's motives. Take the trade-ins off of the dealer's hands so they didn't pile up there, encourage people to buy new cars, and put the scrap to good use.

[Rusty_OToole]

Do you remember Cash for Clunkers? How about the Push Pull or Drag Sale?