Andrew Mellon all-aluminum Pierce Arrow automobile

Slide image. Aluminum horse carriages and Pierce-Arrow at New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1909, as part of Tom's aluminum-history pivot.

Aluminum had tremendous growth. In 1889 they sold 7,000 pounds. By 1909 they were selling fifteen thousand tons. The real growth of aluminum came in World War II. This is the world's total for aluminum production — Germany was making more than we were in 1939. By the end of the war we'd outstripped them. The Germans hadn't been able to increase much, but we went from 148 to 695. All of a sudden Alcoa, which owned most of the business in the United States, was making 2.6 million tons of aluminum. Here's Andrew Mellon's aluminum Pierce-Arrow automobile. They were making horse carriages out of aluminum in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1909.

Tom cites a photograph of JP Morgan standing next to his all-aluminum Pierce Arrow. (Note: canon attributes the car to Andrew Mellon; Tom's on-tape attribution to JP Morgan is preserved as he said it. Flagged for editor — this may be the same car under different ownership, or Tom's recollection of the photo's subject may be in error.)

Now you can say, well, what about aluminum in automobiles? They've been making all-aluminum Audis for twenty years. They made an all-aluminum Duesenberg in the 1930s, or a Pierce Arrow — there's a picture I have of JP Morgan standing next to his all-aluminum Pierce Arrow. But those were not consumer cars like a Model T. The Ford Taurus is still made out of steel. You can buy a $90,000 Audi, all made out of aluminum. And you're going to soon be able to buy a Ford F-150 that's not all aluminum — not the frame rails, they're still steel — but the body is going to be aluminum. They haven't announced the price. This summer they'll announce it.

Tom cites Andrew Mellon's specially-built all-aluminum Pierce Arrow (1930s) as historical precedent for the all-aluminum Audi — both demonstrating that aluminum-bodied cars are easy at high price points ("Any fool can build a $100,000 vehicle out of aluminum") but require real know-how at $20,000. Mellon Bank funded Charles Martin Hall's Alcoa; the all-aluminum Pierce Arrow appears in a book Tom owns.

The Germans actually did build the Audi, which is all aluminum, but that's a $100,000 vehicle. Any fool can build a $100,000 vehicle out of aluminum, but it takes a little know-how to build a $20,000 vehicle out of aluminum. We built Duesenbergs in the 1930s that were all aluminum. I think Mellon — of Mellon Bank, out of Pittsburgh — they just happened to fund a little company called Alcoa. That's where they got to be a big bank. They funded Charles Martin Hall, who started Alcoa. I have a book on aluminum that shows a picture of Andrew Mellon with his all-aluminum Pierce Arrow automobile, specially built for him out of aluminum rather than steel.

People talk about — the Navy wants to build aluminum ships, right? Guess what, they're going to be more expensive, even though aluminum's lighter, okay. And people talk about all-aluminum automobiles. I used to give a talk back in the early 1990s when people were talking about all-aluminum vehicles. I said, what's the big deal about an all-aluminum vehicle? Mellon — I can't remember Mellon's first name, but of Mellon Bank — he helped fund Alcoa. The two of them in Pittsburgh kind of rose to great wealth. In fact it's Carnegie Mellon University. Well, Mellon had an all-aluminum Pierce Arrow in the 1930s because he sort of funded the whole aluminum industry at the time. So why not drive an aluminum car? We had all-aluminum Duesenbergs in the 1930s. It's not new technology to make an all-aluminum car.

Photograph of Mellon with his 1930s aluminum Pierce-Arrow, used as illustration that aluminum automobiles have a long history.

This is a naturally occurring mineral. They found that if you took a torch to it, the aluminum oxide skin would be reduced by this hot molten fluoride, and you'd be able to get the little beads to melt together. So you could make baby rattles and sell them to the king of France. Not a very big market, sort of a boutique niche market. Here's a picture of Andrew W. Mellon — Carnegie Mellon University, the Mellon Bank — with his aluminum Pierce-Arrow automobile in the 1930s. So aluminum automobiles have been around for a long time.

1930s precedent — Mellon, on the Alcoa board, commissioned an all-aluminum car. Used to make the point that cost-no-object aluminum vehicles long predate modern attempts.

Any fool can build a hundred-thousand-dollar aluminum car if they want to invest the time and effort. It only took Alcoa and Audi about 10 years to develop all the processes to make an all-aluminum auto body. But people did it in the 1930s, only they didn't do it for a hundred thousand dollars. It was Andrew Mellon of Mellon Bank, and he was on the board of Alcoa, and he had more money than most of the other people in Pittsburgh combined. He wanted an aluminum car, so he didn't care what he paid for it. We know how to join aluminum, but...

In the early 90s I used to say we didn't know how to build an all-aluminum vehicle — we had the Duesenbergs and JP Morgan's Pierce-Arrow in the 1930s, but these were very expensive vehicles. We didn't know how to build a twenty-five-thousand-dollar Ford Taurus in aluminum that would sell for $25,000. We still don't know how to build a thirty-thousand-dollar F-150, but we do know how to build a 35,000-dollar F-150. We brought the fabrication cost down. They amortized a lot of the design and engineering over the largest vehicle production volume in the world. Plus to a certain extent they're hoping to keep their market share, and they may have taken a hit to a certain extent.

Passing reference inside the Alcoa antitrust history.

The next chapter is the great antitrust case. It started in 1911 — the Justice Department started looking at Alcoa in 1911. As I mentioned, Andrew W. Mellon and his aluminum Pierce-Arrow. It goes on for seventy or eighty pages. So George Kenney, who was Joel Clark's first doctoral student around 1976, basically looked at sales and prices, and could prove that Alcoa, probably Alcan, and Dow Chemical had all agreed after World War II — when the Justice Department was really investigating them and making Alcoa spin off all kinds of things — that Dow Chemical would control the world's magnesium business after World War II, and Alcoa would control the aluminum business, and Alcoa would stay out of the magnesium business.

Mellon, on Alcoa's board, commissioned an all-aluminum luxury vehicle that "only he could afford." Used as the historical anchor for the recurring "rich-person aluminum car" pattern.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that our ability to join a material limits the usefulness of the material. [Tom holds up two pieces of aluminum sheet metal.] Here are a couple of pieces of aluminum sheet metal that came out of the automotive research labs — this one at Chrysler, this one at Ford. These people have been trying to build all-aluminum vehicles for 80 years. We built an all-aluminum Duesenberg in the 1930s. And Mellon, of Mellon Bank — I can't remember his first name — was one of the richest men in the United States. He was on the board of Alcoa, and he had this luxury vehicle made out of all aluminum, but only he could afford it.

Tom attributes the 1930s aluminum automobile to J.P. Morgan, not Mellon. May be the same cluster as "Andrew Mellon all-aluminum Pierce Arrow automobile" or "1930s all-aluminum Duesenberg automobiles" — Tom is reaching for the wealthy-industrialist-owns-aluminum-car trope. **Flag for editor:** likely conflated; the cluster_id used here is provisional.

[Student follow-up.] The problem with the larger boats made of aluminum is cracking, fabrication, fatigue cracking. They don't have the experience. It's not really a problem that they didn't have when they first started building steel ships, but there's a learning curve of how to do the design. The way you design for aluminum is not the same way you design for steel in terms of welded construction and fatigue cracking. Whenever you go to use a new material there's always a learning curve. When Audi went to build all-aluminum [lunar] automobiles, even though they had been built for J.P. Morgan back in the 1930s — he could afford to have his cars repaired — but when they went to high-volume production, they started running into lots of problems they never realized they would have. Then you work your way around and learn to design around those things.