Wheels and Deals

• Contents: Introduction: The Automobile Industry in Australia: A century of auto industry policy; False Start: The Early Years of Motoring and Automotive Manufacturing: The supply side; The demand side; The model T Ford in Australia; The tariff and the ’spoke-shave and hammer brigade’; Acceleration: The Accretion Model of Automotive Industry Development in Australia, 1919-1939: Tariffs as a source of revenue; The lobby; The role of the bureaucracy; Industry structure and performance; Tariffs and the ’motorization’ of society; The outcome of interwar ’policy’; Stalled: Politics and Government Policies of the Later 1930s: Trade diversion and the motor vehicle engine bounty proposal; National interest or self interest? Conflict and cooperation among the leading firms; Political conflict and the bounty scheme; War and the Motor Vehicles Agreement Act; A patriotic duty: Australian Consolidated Industries and the so-called monopoly; The end of the affair; Evaluation; The Canadian Connection: Early development of the industry in Canada; Market conditions; Trade barriers and foreign ownership; Trade barriers, automobile production and exports; Evaluation; Britain and Empire: Regaining the Australian market; Australian trade policy in the 1930s; British producers and Australian production; Post-Second World War: From proposal to manufacture: the establishment of an industry; The development of the industry in the 1950s; The local content plans, 1964-1983; The ’Button’ Car Plan and the Post-1992 Environment: A selective look at the post-Button Plan industry; A Summing-up: The 1990s and beyond; How protection shaped the Australian automotive industry in the 20th century; Bibliography; Index.

'... a fascinating and lively account of the development of the automobile manufacturing industry in Australia... an important contribution to Australian economic history... Conlon and Perkins have provided a valuable industry-level study...' Business History