In the first years of the century, it was clubs of automobile owners – rather than any fledgling carmakers – that staged reliability and endurance tests, pitting motor cars against each other and against rivals powered by electricity or steam. The
petrol engines won – they just kept running.

So by 1912, when the last reliability test was held, it had become generally accepted that a motor vehicle could get you both there and back, and buying one was not a risky investment in a dubious technology with uncertain prospects.

Market Rebels uses the grassroots movement that led to the widespread acceptance of the motor car as the starting point for a series of brief case studies that look at “how activists make or break radical innovations”. The author is Hayagreeva Rao, a professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University.