During WWII, a struggling automaker and Detroit's industry titan race to build a revolutionary all-purpose military vehicle, then spend decades battling to reinvent their wartime creation into America's most popular type of car: the SUV.

A husband's homemade bandage, a college dropout's breakthrough adhesive, and a factory worker's wartime fix transform simple strips of tape into indispensable American icons — creating a $90 billion industry, one sticky invention at a time.