TheMovieSmith Review of The Cars That Made America

The Cars That Made America (2017)

Another History Channel Inaccuracy

[3/10 · 19 August 2017]

This past week History Channel held "Car Week". A week dedicated to history specials and shows about cars. At first I was excited to see an actual history program on the "History Channel" (instead of Pawn Stars, American Pickers, etc-which all deal loosely with history and since you know...the name should actually reflect what is on the network), however I was soon disappointed. (Side note: It's a shame that with all the real history related programming History Channel has in their library they failed to air any of it during an entire week. I could think of at least four or five car related episodes of "Modern marvels" alone. But I digress.) This mini-series, just as pointed out by reviewers, is riddled with inaccuracies and full of nothing but half truths that were written and arranged in a way to satisfy their (mostly liberal) narrative. Case in point, like mostly everyone else, the series goes out of it's way to show how Henry Ford 'invented' the assembly line. Utterly false since it was invented and patented by Ransom Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1901 before Ford had even been removed from his second car company. Speaking of Ransom Olds; why was he only essentially mentioned in passing at a time when he had the largest American car company (if not the world)? Ford did adopt the assembly line and was able to improve it for greater efficiency and success but it is clearly misleading. Speaking of topics only mentioned in passing, how can a series called "The Cars That Made America" not feature more than a blurb about the ultimate American car: The Corvette? For that matter, it is beyond me how a series that features the (partial) biographies of some of the world's greatest car engineers and designers not mention the Corvette's creator (and ultimate concept car designer) Harley Earl even once. It looks like this series was commissioned by people with a serious agenda against some of the greatest American Classics ever (I didn't hear the word Thunderbird once either). Instead we got a devoted story line to the DeLorean, which wasn't even an American car. I know it was necessary to end the DeLorean story line, but that couldn't have been in passing and devote some time to the issues I listed above. All in all, if you are interested in early American car history you'd be better served by reading up on it or finding other programming that might be less flashy but more accurate. The series turned into nothing more than a failed attempt at history (or at least their revisionist version of history) and a prime example of how much the History Channel has changed (for the worse) in the past few years.