Model "T" History

Tin Lizzie was the nickname for the Model-T Ford. Lizzie is short for Elizabeth, a common name for horses at the time. To people who had never seen anything like it, the Model-T was a "metal horse."

The Model T, according to Henry Ford, was available "in any color you choose, so long as it's black." This may be Ford's most famous statement about his most famous car, but it is not the most telling. The comment that most accurately reflects the nature of Ford's gift to the world is a little-known remark he made in October 1908, on the occasion of the birth of the Model T: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude."

That is exactly what the Model T was. With that vehicle, Ford revolutionized not only the automobile industry but American society, and arguably all of Western culture. With the introduction of the Model T, automobiles became available to everyone, not just the well-to-do.

Although the "Tin Lizzie," with its four-cylinder motor, magneto ignition, and planetary transmission, was a technically advanced automobile, it was by no means technically revolutionary. Rather, it was Ford's manufacturing process that revolutionized the industry. He was not the first to build a car on an assembly line, but he perfected the system. After Ford opened his new Model T plant in 1913, he produced one Model T every 93 minutes, a remarkable reduction from the 728 minutes per car that was previously required. By the time the last Model T was built in 1927, the company was producing an automobile every 24 seconds. In part because of this efficiency, the Model T's price dropped from its original 1908 cost of nearly $1,000 to under $300 in 1927. This was possible in spite of the fact that, beginning in 1914, Ford paid assembly-line workers $5.00 per day at a time when prevailing wages averaged about $2.35 per day.

Ultimately, this combination of efficiency and high wages led to the fulfillment of Ford's prediction. The Model T was, indeed, a motor car for the masses. Not only was it cheap, but thanks in part to Ford's wage scales, ordinary workers for the first time had the disposable income necessary to purchase one. With the Model T, the automobile, which had once been an expensive plaything for the wealthy, began its transformation into an everyday necessity.

A LOOK BACK: Ford's Model T took millions for their 1st ride

May 27, 2003

BY TONY SWAN
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

Like so many epochal inventions, the Ford Model T seemed far from extraordinary at first glance.

When the T debuted in October 1908, Ford Motor Co. was just one of many aspiring carmakers.

And even though the new car was modestly innovative, it's fair to say that no one, including Henry Ford himself, foresaw the impact this machine would have on society.

Ford aimed at creating a mass market by putting cars within reach of the average citizen. In the process, he changed the world.

In 1908, the automobile was still in its infancy but no longer a novelty. There were almost 150,000 cars registered in the United States, a good many of them Fords.

Ford had been operating since June 1903, initially in a small converted wagon works on Mack Avenue, and in 1905 moved to a purpose-built three-story brick factory on Piquette Avenue.

The plant, incidentally, is currently undergoing restoration, albeit with no financial assistance from Ford.

En route to the T, the company created Models A, B, C, F, K, N, R and S, and the Piquette plant was busily cranking out the last three models while Ford and his key collaborators -- Charles Sorenson, C. Harold Wills and Joseph Galamb -- cordoned off an upstairs corner to work on the car.

An evolution of the N, R and S models, the T embodied some significant departures from its immediate predecessors. For example, it was the first Ford equipped with left-hand drive, a change that soon altered our traffic patterns.

The castings for its 176.4-cubic-inch, or 2.9-liter, four-cylinder engine -- rated at 20 horsepower and 65 foot-pounds of torque -- included the case for the two-speed transmission, and had a removable cylinder head, sophisticated touches in an inexpensive car.

Its ignition was fired by a magneto system, far more reliable than contemporary batteries.

Its top speed was about 40 m.p.h. -- more than fast enough, considering the state of U.S. roads and the car's marginal brakes.

And like the N, R and S models, it made extensive use of high-strength vanadium steel in the chassis, helping to make the wood-bodied car both light (about 1,200 pounds) and extraordinarily tough.

After an initial run of a few hundred cars, the T adopted the famous three-pedal control arrangement -- clutch, reverse, and brake, each bearing the appropriate initial -- to simplify operation.

It was deceptive simplicity, though, particularly the starting process. The T didn't offer the option of electric starting until 1919, eight years after it was introduced by Cadillac. Most T owners fired up with a hand crank, a tricky process that led to hundreds of injuries -- broken wrists, arms and worse.

Nevertheless, millions of Americans got their first exposure to motoring in a Model T, and most of them emerged with warm feelings about the automobile known as Henry's Tin Lizzie.

Why? Partly because of its virtues as a transportation appliance? More important, though, was its increasingly attractive price, a function of the economies of scale that went with the application of modern manufacturing techniques.

This was the true genius of the Model T.

While the T was being born on Piquette Avenue, Ford was already making plans for a vast new factory in Highland Park.

The new plant began spitting out Model T's in 1910 -- some 32,000 of them -- but that paled beside 1913, when Ford instituted the world's first automotive moving assembly line. Though the process was still undergoing refinements, at year's end Highland Park had produced 168,220 T's.

Annual production soared as Ford continued to reduce assembly time, and prices sank correspondingly. The base price for a Model T roadster in 1908 was $825. By 1925, the same car cost $260.

For all his vision, Henry Ford failed to see that there could be too much of a good thing. Despite running changes over the years, the T became increasingly obsolescent. In May 1927, the Highland Park assembly lines finally ground to a halt.

The T was history, but what a history! When production ceased, over 15 million T's had gone forth, most to people who had never driven a car before. In fact, at one point half the cars on Earth were Model T's.

Henry Ford had shrewdly perceived one of humankind's great dreams -- the dream of unlimited personal mobility -- and then created a means for making that dream a reality. In the process, he literally put the world on wheels.

Tony Swan is the executive editor of Car and Driver.