Ford Model T (1908): The Car That Put America on Wheels

The Ford Model T was a car built by the Ford Motor Company of Detroit and put on sale on 1 October 1908. Simple, tough and steadily cheaper, it became the first car that millions of ordinary families could afford. Over 19 years about 15 million were made in the United States alone, and the Model T changed how Americans worked, shopped, farmed and lived.

Background: cars for the rich

In the early 1900s the automobile was still a luxury. Most cars were hand-built in small numbers, expensive to buy and difficult to maintain. Roads outside the cities were mostly dirt tracks that turned to mud in rain, and in 1900 there were only about 8,000 registered motor vehicles in the whole United States.

Henry Ford (1863–1947), a farm boy from Dearborn, Michigan, had worked as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company before building his first experimental car, the Quadricycle, in 1896. After two failed ventures, he founded the Ford Motor Company in June 1903. Its early models, labelled with letters of the alphabet, included the cheap and popular Model N of 1906.

Ford’s goal was clear. He wanted a “motor car for the great multitude”: a car rugged enough for rural roads, easy for an untrained owner to drive and repair, and priced low enough for a farmer or a factory worker.

Designing the Model T

The car was designed in 1907 and 1908 in a small, locked room at the company’s Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit. Henry Ford led the work with a small team that included Childe Harold Wills, a skilled engineer and metallurgist, and the Hungarian-born draughtsman Joseph Galamb, assisted by Eugene Farkas.

Several features set the Model T apart:

• Vanadium steel. Ford used this light but very strong alloy, still unusual in American cars, for many key parts.
• A simple, sturdy engine. A four-cylinder petrol engine of about 2.9 litres (177 cubic inches) produced around 20 horsepower and gave a top speed of roughly 40–45 miles per hour (64–72 km/h).
• Easy controls. A two-speed planetary transmission was worked by foot pedals, which made gear changes simpler than in many rival cars.
• High ground clearance. The car rode high, so it could cross ruts, mud and rough country roads.
• Interchangeable parts. Parts were standardised, so owners and local mechanics could replace them cheaply.

The Model T was offered with several body styles, from a two-seat runabout to a five-seat touring car, and later as a coupé, a sedan and a light truck. Its steering wheel was on the left, which helped make left-hand drive the American norm.

Launch, mass production and falling prices

The first production Model T was completed at Piquette Avenue in late September 1908, and the car was offered for sale from 1 October 1908. The touring car cost $850, a fairly low price for a car of its quality but still more than a year’s wages for many workers. Demand was so strong that Ford soon stopped taking orders for a time because the factory could not keep up.

In 1910 production moved to a large new factory at Highland Park, just outside Detroit, designed by the architect Albert Kahn. There, Ford’s managers, including Charles Sorensen, kept reorganising work to make cars faster and more cheaply. The breakthrough came in 1913 with the moving assembly line, which cut the time needed to assemble a chassis from more than 12 hours to about 90 minutes.

Mass production allowed Ford to do something few manufacturers had tried: cut prices again and again while selling more cars. As output rose, the cost of each car fell, and Ford passed much of the saving on to customers.

In January 1914 Ford also announced the famous “five-dollar day”, roughly doubling the basic pay of many of its workers. The policy was meant to stop very high staff turnover, but it also meant that Ford workers could themselves afford the cars they built.

Ford expanded abroad too. In 1911 the company opened its first overseas assembly plant at Trafford Park, Manchester, and the Model T became the best-selling car in Britain for a time. Model Ts were also assembled in Canada, Australia, Argentina, Germany and many other countries.

Key people

• Henry Ford founded the company, set the goal of a cheap car for everyone and backed mass production. His refusal to change the basic design later became a weakness.
• Childe Harold Wills helped design the car and championed the use of vanadium steel.
• Joseph Galamb drew many of the Model T’s components, including key parts of the engine and transmission.
• Charles Sorensen was a production manager who played a leading role in developing the assembly line at Highland Park.
• James Couzens, Ford’s business manager, organised the dealer network and finances that sold the car across the country.

How the Model T changed America

The Model T helped turn the car from a toy of the wealthy into an everyday tool. Around 1918, by common estimates, about half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. Registered passenger cars in the country rose from under half a million in 1910 to more than 8 million in 1920.

For farmers, the car ended much of the isolation of rural life. A family could drive to town for supplies, to church or to visit relatives, and farmers adapted the Model T’s engine to run saws, pumps and other machinery. Doctors could reach patients more quickly, and children could travel further to school.

The car also reshaped towns and cities. Petrol stations, repair garages, motels and roadside diners spread across the country. Growing numbers of drivers pressed governments for better roads, and the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 began large-scale federal funding for highways. Over time, cheap motoring encouraged suburbs to grow beyond the reach of streetcars and railways.

There were costs as well. Traffic accidents and deaths rose sharply in the 1910s and 1920s, horses and the trades that depended on them declined, and cities had to invent traffic laws, signals and parking rules.

Decline and replacement

By the mid-1920s the Model T looked old-fashioned. Rivals, especially General Motors under Alfred P. Sloan, offered cars with more power, electric starting as standard, closed bodies, a choice of colours and new styles every year. General Motors also sold cars on credit, and used cars, many of them second-hand Model Ts, competed with new ones.

Ford’s sales fell, and in May 1927 the company stopped production. The 15 millionth Model T rolled off the line on 26 May 1927. Ford’s factories then closed for months while they were retooled for the new Model A, which went on sale in December 1927. During the shutdown Chevrolet overtook Ford as the best-selling American brand.

Myths and facts

• “Any colour so long as it is black.” Henry Ford wrote words to this effect in his 1922 memoir, but the car was not always black. Black was the only colour from 1914 to 1925; early and late Model Ts came in other colours.
• “Ford invented the automobile.” He did not. Karl Benz and others had built cars in the 1880s. Ford’s achievement was making a car cheaply and in enormous numbers.
• “Ford invented the assembly line.” Moving lines already existed in other industries, such as meatpacking. Ford’s team was the first to apply them on a vast scale to a complex product like a car.

Timeline

• 1903, 16 June: The Ford Motor Company is incorporated in Michigan.
• 1908, 1 October: The Model T goes on sale, priced at $850 for the touring car.
• 1910: Production moves to the new Highland Park plant near Detroit.
• 1911: Ford opens an assembly plant at Trafford Park, Manchester, England.
• 1913, December: The moving assembly line is in operation for Model T chassis at Highland Park.
• 1914, January: Ford announces the five-dollar working day.
• 1916: The Federal Aid Road Act starts federal funding for American roads.
• 1927, 26 May: The 15 millionth Model T is completed, and production ends.
• 1927, December: The Model A replaces the Model T.

Legacy

The Model T held the record as the best-selling single car model for decades, until the Volkswagen Beetle passed its total in 1972. It is often named the most influential car of the 20th century. Thousands survive, and enthusiasts’ clubs still drive and restore them.

The methods behind the Model T, standardised design, mass production, high wages and low prices, became known as “Fordism” and spread to industries and countries around the world. Ford’s British plant at Dagenham, which later saw the Dagenham sewing machinists’ strike, grew out of this expansion. The car culture it created shaped the American economy that boomed in the 1920s and then collapsed in the Great Depression.

Why it matters

The Model T showed that a complex machine could be made cheaply enough for ordinary people. In doing so it changed transport, work and the shape of towns, much as the Wright brothers’ first flight opened the age of aviation. The car-centred world of the 20th century began on Ford’s production lines.