Jason Torchinsky, "A very common word was invented by Dodge", Jalopnik 12/15/2014:
Dodge is known for producing many things, most notably cars, minivans, and sometimes large, lingering clouds of tire smoke. Oh, and the K-Car. But one thing I didn't realize was that they're also in the word business, coining an extremely common word way back in the 1910s. [self-referential clickbait omitted]
That wasn't so bad, right? Sorry to do that, but, you know, I have old cars to maintain. Okay, here's the word that didn't exist before some Dodge PR guy came up with it: Dependability.
Um, no. The OED's entry for dependability, not updated since 1933, has
1901 F. T. Bullen Sack of Shakings 264 Next to the Trades in dependability..are the west winds of the regions north and south of the Tropics.
It's easy to antedate this with modern resources — thus from "The Manufacture of Crucible Cast Steel, by Mr. Henry Seebohm", The Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1884:
Or R.H. Inglis Palgrave, "Notes on Banking in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and Hamburg", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol XXXVI, Year 1873:
It's true that the 1895 Century Dictionary has dependableness but not dependability, reflecting the fact that the frequency of dependability increased rapidly after 1900:
But invented by "some Dodge PR guy" in the 1910's? I don't think so.
Mr. Torchinsky didn't invent this legend — he got it from a nicely-done online car-dealership history ("Reed Brothers Dodge History 1915 – 2012"), which in turn got it from a circa-1930 Dodge advertisement:
The ad doesn't actually claim that Dodge invented the word dependability — it just uses temporal correlation to imply causation: "Dodge Brothers put a certain quality into a motor car. And suddenly, everywhere, people were talking about Dependability."
[h/t Alex King]