The Cars That Made the World

Off-puttingly breathy and preposterously over-dramatic commentary gets irritating after a while. It's like he's voicing a commercial or spoof Hollywood blockbuster trailer. Major omissions when it comes to big players in the car industry.

The many stories of automotive history are always fascinating, although as noted by other reviewers, it is sadly marred by:

• overly breathy narration
• only a selection of the many stories underlying the development of the motor car
• poorly acted re-creations of so-called key moments in the history of each story, by a bunch of frat boy actors with American accents playing their roles like they have put on some fancy costumes in a college play, not trying to recreate historical moments with any sense of accuracy.

Although probably not a surprise given it was made for the US history channel...

This is quite watchable entertainment, and not at all "dry" in its presentation. There is not a lot of repetition provided for those who forgot what happened before the last commercial break, and it does not get too technical. Unfortunately, this is also a negative, as this coverage of the first 100 years of the automobile has quite a few missing people, companies and events. Benz and Daimler's accomplishments are covered well, although it is rather off-putting to hear Daimler pronounced "Dymler", which is the German pronunciation - especially when "Motorwagen" and "Volkswagen" are pronounced "Motor Waggon" and "Volks Waggon" respectively. My wife also noted that over the many years of Benz's history depicted, his wife is always wearing the same dress! The early French motoring scene is barely mentioned - yet has many inventions stemming from it that are important even today. Likewise the Italian industry. The roles of Rolls, Royce and Bentley are well documented, and their importance in the aero-engine business is given its rightful place, but their continued existence and fortunes are ignored after the 1920's. However, Daimler-Benz similarly produced a huge number and variety of the aero engines used by Germany, yet did not rate a mention on this side of their business. The great racing battles of the 1930's, between Mercedes-Benz, Auto Union and BMW were not mentioned, despite the important advances in technologies of engine, chassis and design they spawned. Honda and Toyoda are well chosen as engineers representative of the birth of the Japanese car industry, but no mention is made of the hugely important involvement in motorcycle GP racing by Honda in the 1960's which was the basis for the sophisticated engine designs they later used in cars as well. The history of Porsche and Volkswagen is somewhat simplified. Ferdinand Porsche's meeting with Hitler (an urban legend?) is handled awkwardly. It would have been good to acknowledge Major Ivan Hirst of the British Army officer who basically rescued the Wolfsburg VW operation after the war and set the company on its road to success. I also must comment on the bombers shown allegedly bombing Germany. They are B29's, never seen in the European Theatre of the War.

Overall, it's not a bad series, though. The characters and how they were inspired to create certain inventions have a lot of dramatic license in their depiction, but that helps to tell the story in an engaging way. Overall, I think most people would enjoy this series.

It starts from around late 1880s until mid 1970s, so it DOES NOT cover the last 50 years or so. The documentary essentially shows how the traditional car companies started off and their journey to success via a drama like narrative with actors and the surroundings neatly set up, occasionally featuring old footage along with voiceover from a few individuals who are related to the automotive industry in some way. Struggles and challenges of different companies are shown in parallel in context of global events.

All in all, it gives an overview of the evolution of the automotive industry, covering decent amount of information. Highly recommend watching it.

The acting and choice of the actors was a great success, the editing and direction are congratulations, the narration and the plot involve the viewer, but the strength of the mini-series is the scenes recorded with the actors.