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From the assembly lines of Detroit to the factory towns of Southern Ontario, the North American auto industry did more than build cars. It built the modern middle class.

In Driven Wealth: The Rise, Fall and Future of the North American Auto Dream, Christopher M. Michaud examines how the automobile industry transformed ordinary industrial workers into homeowners, entrepreneurs, and participants in one of the greatest periods of middle-class expansion in modern history. What began as a manufacturing revolution eventually reshaped cities, labour, culture, politics, and the very idea of economic security across Canada and the United States.

The book traces the industry from its early beginnings through wartime mobilization, the explosive prosperity of the postwar decades, and the long decline that followed the oil shocks of the 1970s, globalization, automation, and shifting consumer habits. Along the way, Michaud explores the rise of union power, the integration of the Canadian and American economies through the Auto Pact, the collapse of once-thriving industrial communities, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the future of work itself.

At its core, Driven Wealth is not simply a book about cars. It is a book about people. About fathers who built lives on assembly lines. About communities built around factories. About a generation that believed industrial work could provide stability, dignity, and a future for their children.

Now, as electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, automation, and global competition reshape the industry once again, the central question becomes unavoidable:

Can the North American auto industry reinvent itself for a new century, or was the era of broadly shared industrial prosperity a unique moment in history that may never return?

Thoughtful, historically grounded, and deeply human, Driven Wealth explores the industry that helped define North America, and asks what happens when the economic engine that once powered the middle class begins to stall.