See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_brands . Australia is sort of interesting as is Britain.
OK, that's probably 700+ manufacturers after duplicates are counted for. Which is great!
But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original criteria of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories". Spot-checking the links from Wikipedia turns up several references to converted bicycle and motorcycle factories. No references to "two guys in a garage" which kinda makes sense considering garages probably came after the early automobiles. :-)
No doubt some of them started in barns, but again, I don't think that was a huge part of the economy.
The US wikipedia entry claims that very few car companies were started after 1930. I know a couple from the 60s that didn't make the list which were literally a couple of guys in a garage. No, they weren't casting their own engine blocks but neither does Lotus for some of their models.
> But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original criteria of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories".
Most made very few cars so it's unlikely that they had significant factories.
> I don't think that was a huge part of the economy.
There were two separate claims. The first was that small scale manufacturing was a significant part of manufacturing. I haven't addressed that.
The second was that lots of car companies had almost nothing in the way of "factory". That's the claim that I've supported.
