Bobby Jones drives a three-wheeled golf cart with Elivera Doud, the mother of former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, in the 1950s at Augusta National Golf Club. Photo: Augusta National via Getty Images
Editor's note: This story on metro Augusta, Georgia, golf car makers, which originally ran on April 6, 2022, is the third in a series of special GGP/Biz pieces during the week of the PGA Show in Orlando, Florida.
Detroit became the automotive capital of North America when the Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – settled in the industrial heartland to create the Motor City.
Augusta, Georgia, had its own Big Three cement its global reputation as a golf town, but the Masters city is also the “Motown” of the golf car industry with E-Z-Go and Club Car calling the metro Augusta area home.
E-Z-Go and Club Car – only 14 miles apart in neighboring counties – manufacture more than 80 percent of golf cars in the world, while the Yamaha plant not far down the road in Newnan, Georgia, takes up most of the remaining per...