Your Rental Needs May Vary

Avis Airlines Rent-A-Car System was founded in 1946 by Warren Avis (1915-2007), an owner of an automobile dealership in Detroit. He had the idea of providing car-rental services at airports, astutely believing air travel would quickly become more popular than rail travel. They were the first car rental business to be located at an airport, opening two locations at Willow Run Airport near Detroit and at Miami Airport in Florida. He established branch operations across the United States over the next few years and became the second-largest car rental company in the country by 1953. 

In 1962, their corporate slogan, "We're only No. 2. We try harder," was a positive campaign to compete with the number one competitor, Hertz. Today, Avis is a provider to the commercial segment, serving business travelers at major airports internationally, and to leisure travelers at off-airport locations. Avis featured General Motors vehicles during the late 1970s, but Ford vehicles were showcased prior, as the above 1958 advertisement proves. Other popular brands comprise their fleet today. Avis has been owned by a number of other companies, along with several periods of being a public company.

Executive Leasing Company and its fleet of seven vehicles were founded eleven years after Avis by Jack Crawford Taylor (1922-2016) in St. Louis, Missouri.   Taylor was a naval aviator during World War II, serving on the USS Enterprise. In 1969, he would rename the company Enterprise Rent-A-Car to honor the aircraft carrier and reflect his personal values and leadership philosophy. The company focused on city-based rentals rather than competing with airport-centric rental firms for persons needing a rental while their own was being repaired. A wise strategy that helped the business grow steadily.

Their iconic "e" highway logo was introduced early on, but went through a few color and design changes before settling on their classic green and black color scheme. In the early 1970s, the "We'll pick you up" tagline was introduced, a unique service that became a trademark of their customer-centric approach. This service, along with partnerships with auto repair shops, helped Enterprise build a strong city-based "neighborhood" network. The leadership has been passed down through generations of the Taylor family. Enterprise eventually embraced Avis's airport innovation in the early years of the twenty-first century after acquiring the Vanguard Car Rental Group, National Car Rental, and Alamo Rent-A-Car brands to its portfolio. 

Woodward Avenue Nostalgia

 

Michigan highway 1 (M-1), commonly known as Woodward Avenue, is a north–south state trunkline highway in the Detroit Metro area. The highway, called "Detroit's Main Street", runs from Detroit north-northwesterly to Pontiac. Woodward Avenue was created after the Detroit Fire of 1805. The thoroughfare followed the route of the Saginaw Trail, an Indian trail that linked Detroit with Pontiac, Flint, and Saginaw. The Saginaw Trail connected to the Mackinaw Trail, which extended north to the Straits of Mackinac at the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.

Today, Woodward Avenue is most famous for its "Woodward Dream Cruise" held each August. Founded in 1995 as a fundraiser for a soccer field in Ferndale, it takes place on Woodward Avenue between Pontiac and Ferndale. But there is a long history of crusing Woodward Avenue. In 1848, young carriage drivers raced one another along the avenue after the roadway was converted from logs to planks. By 1958, the roadway was used for unofficial street racing with cars. The wide width, median and sections lacking a large commercial presence attracted a reputation for the competition. 

The above photos compare the intersections of Woodward and Farnsworth in 1901 and today.

Body by Fisher

 

"Pound for pound -- what do you find?" is the headline accompanying this 1949 illustration. Do all sorts of pounding, thumping and slamming to discover the solidity of steel. I guess. The Fisher Body Corporation was a Detroit, Michigan automobile coachbuilder founded by the Fisher brothers in 1908 but its beginnings trace back to a horse-drawn carriage shop in Norwalk, Ohio, in the late 1800s. Since 1919 a division of General Motors, it was dissolved to form other GM divisions in 1984. Noted for many innovations, Fisher Body designed slanted windshields to reduce glare in 1930, dual windshield wipers in 1936 and produced GM's first airbag in 1974. The name and its iconic "Body by Fisher" logo were well known to the public, as GM vehicles displayed the emblem on their door sill plates until the mid-1990s.

An Amber Caution Zone

 

A Detroit, Michigan traffic officer, William Potts, created the three-color, four-way traffic signal in 1920 which was first installed at Woodward Avenue and Fort Street in Detroit, Michigan. It became the standard by the mid-1930s. The prior red and green-only signals resulted in numerous fender-benders: when the signal turned green, vehicles would immediately proceed through the intersection, expecting others to have stopped before crossing into the intersection. The middle amber/yellow signal allowed for a "caution zone" to proceed through the intersection if one could not safely stop when the signal turned red. Likewise, vehicles already stopped would need to wait until they received their green light to proceed. The design was adopted in future traffic light designs across the world. Today there are well over 310,000 traffic signals in the US alone. 

Note: The first traffic lights were invented in London in the 1860s, but they were not effective. Adapted from the railroad signal system, only red gas lights were used at night to signal stops, and green gas lights during the daytime. The life of the first traffic light signal was short-lived when a gas leak caused one of the signals to explode not long after being installed. It took the United States nearly forty years to adopt the system but with higher safety standards.