In the United States

• The industry produces a total of 356,000 cars and 22,000 trucks
• Ford production rises to 78,440; but market shares skid to 22% as competition increases
• Ford Model T prices are slashed by $80; Ford claims each dollar's reduction attracts a thousand new buyers
• Ford has 7,000 dealerships in the US, at least one in every town with a population over 2,000
• Henry Ford breaks a strike at a Buffalo plant by closing it and shipping its machinery to Detroit
• On May 30, America's fastest racing cars gathered at Indianapolis for the 2nd 500-mile Memorial Day race over the bricks. Joe Dawson topped the field, averaging 78.7 mph in his 4-cylinder National racer. This race is an annual event
• Competitors get the Indianapolis Speedway to ban Model Ts, ostensibly because they are too light
• A new Automobile Board of Trade sponsors the 12th National Automobile Show
• A wide variety of self-starters appear at the show including 13 acetylene-operated units, 6 using compressed air, 7 electric, 14 mechanical, 2 gasoline-powered, plus one that operates from exhaust gases
• White traffic-separation lines are painted on the streets of Redlands, California
• A loaded Packard is the first truck to make a westbound transcontinental crossing in 46 days
• The City of Chicago enacts an ordinance limiting horn blowing
• Charles W. Nash is named president of General Motors; Walter P. Chrysler goes to work for him, as Buick plant manager. He takes a 50% pay cut
• A short-lived cyclecar craze begins-the low-cost, often fragile vehicles draw scorn from some, purchase agreements from others
• The Boyce Motor-Meter is introduced to monitor engine temperature
• New Yorkers brag that Fifth Avenue has more motor traffic than any other street in the world. The city now has traffic police at every corner south of 42nd Street
• New York has piled up $100 million in highway debt, more than all the other states put together
• New York: 423 driving deaths reported for 1911; city seeks new auto laws
• Bronx River Parkway Commission hires Jay Downer as its chief engineer and Gilmore Clark as its landscape architect. They will design the first urban parkway planned for motor vehicles
• Golden State Park, San Francisco, opens its park drives to cars, the last urban park in the US to do so
• Theodore Roosevelt injured in an auto accident while campaigning for president
• Motor Car magazine writes about motor campers: 'Thoreau at 29 cents a gallon. 'Time and space are at your beck and call, your freedom is complete.'
• Boston architect Harry Morton Ramsey: 'The garage should not convey too strongly at first sight the idea of a garage
• Hal Roach presents the first of the Keystone Kops film series, which features nihilistic car chases
• Society of Automotive Engineers standardizes screw threads and other car parts
• Novelties: pressed steel body developed by Edward Gowen Budd; carbon black as a tire strengthener; dump truck and bookmobile (Washington County, Maryland)
• First offshore oil wells (Southern California)
• World's first flying-boat airplane, designed by Glenn Curtiss, makes maiden voyage at Hammondsport, New York
• First automobile driver jailed for speeding
• Standard Oil opened the first gasoline station in Cincinnati Ohio. Up until that time, car owners bought fuel from hardware stores and sometimes lumberyards

US Auto Manufacturers

• Cadillac adopts an electric self-starter developed by Charles F. Kettering, accompanied by generator-battery lighting and ignition systems
• A total of 3,000 Chevrolets are built; the six-cylinder touring car sells for $2,150
• Edward Gowen Budd invents the all-steel car body. Oakland and Hupmobile take an interest, and Dodge Brothers orders Budd bodies for its forthcoming car
• Packard introduces its first six-cylinder series, with a 525-cid T-head engine
• Hudson moves into the medium-price field at mid-year with the 1913 Model 54, its first six-cylinder
• Hudson's Mile-A-Minute Roadster is guaranteed to do-what else?- 60 miles an hour
• The Stewart Motor Company is formed to produce cars and trucks
• Waverly Electric advertises a car with a rear-facing front seat and steering lever for drivers in the center of the back seat. The arrangement allows drivers to converse face to face will all passengers
• Pierce-Arrow makes a 13,678-cc. engine

And From the World

• Henry Ford sends Charles Sorenson to Britain, where he breaks the Metal Workers Union in the Model T plant
• For the first time, New York, London, and Paris manifest more motor vehicles than horse-drawn traffic and suffer more fatalities caused by cars than wagons
• Britain decides to switch its naval fuel from coal to oil and starts to buy a majority share of British Petroleum
• Renault sells 100 taxicabs in Mexico City
• Norway requires auto insurance for all drivers
• Paris adopts New York's Eno system of traffic regulation, and its police plan to shoot out the tires of cars whose drivers refuse orders to stop
• Writer Marcel Proust has lined his study with cork to limit traffic noise
• Kaiser Wilhelm owns 25 cars; Czar Nicholas II has 21. Emperor Mutsuhito of Japan orders two Mercedes cars
• German, British, and French manufacturers demand protection from US exports
• On April 19, Paris taxi drivers go back to work after a 144-day strike
• Two US drivers are disqualified in Dieppe Grand Prix for illegal refueling on June 26