Henry Ford with a 1921 Model T. Images courtesy Ford Motor Company.
Though Henry Ford’s name is often associated with the birth of both the automobile and the manufacturing assembly line, he actually invented neither. That said, it’s probably a fair statement to say that Henry Ford did invent the modern way of building automobiles, transforming them from novelty items for the wealthy into a means of affordable transportation for the masses. While it’s a bit over-reaching to say that without the Ford Model T there would be no modern automotive industry, it is safe to state that the industry (and the American landscape itself) would be radically different had the forward-thinking Model T – and the manufacturing methods it eventually embraced – not entered the market in the early years of the 20th Century.
Production of the Ford Model T began in October of 1908 at Ford’s Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit, Michigan, but its actual design began some four years earlier. Building on the lessons learned from constructing the Models N, R and S, the Model T represented Henry Ford’s vision of affordable and reliable family transportation. It debuted at a price as low as $825, FOB Detroit, at a time when the average house sold for less than $6,000 and the average worker earned less than $500 annually. While consumers had less expensive options for new cars, none boasted the same use of vanadium steel used in the Model T; in fact, the only other automobiles to make use of the stronger steel alloy were French luxury cars, which sold for quite a bit more than the pedestrian Model T.
Ford’s advanced thinking wasn’t limited to just Model T production and materials, either. Power for the new automobile came from a 177-cu.in. inline four-cylinder engine that introduced the concept of a removable cylinder head, rated at 20 horsepower and bolted to a three-speed manual transmission (which featured two forward speeds and one reverse gear). Top speed under ideal conditions was said to be up to 45 MPH, while fuel economy was as high as 21 MPG, depending upon fuel type used. At a time when gasoline wasn’t always easy to find (especially in rural areas), Ford designed the Model T to have multi-fuel flexibility, giving it the capability of running on gasoline, kerosene or ethanol.
Despite popular urban myth, early Ford Model Ts were available in green, red, blue and gray; black wasn’t even offered as a color option until the car’s second year on the market. Henry Ford constantly looked for production efficiencies, however, and ultimately the Model T was available only in black as a means to further quicken the pace of assembly. Ford’s revolutionary idea about production was this: The more cars he could build in a given amount of time, the cheaper he could sell them to an awaiting public. In this regard, Henry Ford was perhaps the first industrialist willing to trade per-piece profit for outright sales volume, a truly radical concept at the time.
The first step towards Ford’s goal of optimized production occurred in 1910, when assembly of the Model T moved from Detroit to a new Ford manufacturing plant located in Highland Park. To call the facility vast would be a gross understatement; built on some 60 acres of land, the Highland Park plant contained a foundry, business headquarters, engine testing facility, manufacturing and storage facilities, all connected by a series of tunnels and fed by an on-site rail yard. Beneath the plant’s massive skylights and long expanse of windows, miles of conveyor belts, overhead cranes and trolleys ensured that material arrived where needed, when needed.
The Model T’s centennial celebration, 2008.
In 1913, Ford implemented the concept of a moving assembly line in Highland Park to further cut production times and boost output. Henry Ford didn’t pioneer this idea, but instead borrowed it from the meat packing industry after noting how efficiently hogs were butchered by stationary workers assisted by a moving line. Running at 44 inches per minute, Ford trimmed the time taken to produce a flywheel magneto from 20 minutes down to five minutes, reducing the number of workers needed in the process. By late 1913, the moving assembly line was applied to other areas of Model T production, cutting engine assembly time from 600 minutes to 226 minutes. On a stationary jig, assembling the Model T’s chassis took some 12.5 hours and required some 6,000 square feet of manufacturing space; switching to an automated line cut assembly time to 1.5 hours and trimmed needed space to just 300 square feet.
Another of Henry Ford’s revolutionary ideas was “the $5.00 workday,” which nearly doubled the previous average wage ($2.34 per day) of an assembly line worker. Ford rolled this out on January 5, 1914, introducing it at the same time as a 40-hour workweek. While this seemed altruistic on the part of Henry Ford, perhaps his ultimate motivation for the hike in pay and the reduction in hours worked was to avoid an even costlier labor strike, like the one that had hit Studebaker in 1913. In the days following Ford’s announcement, 10,000 job seekers descended on Ford’s Highland Park factory, overwhelming the staff of its employment office. With no way to interview all the prospective employees for the few available jobs, Ford’s Highland Park employment office was forced to temporarily close its doors. Riots ensued, and dispersal of the crowd ultimately required the assistance of the Detroit Fire Department, which turned its high-pressure hoses on the crowd.
Meanwhile, Ford’s Model T was selling at an astonishing rate, thanks in part to the variety of configurations available and its oft-decreasing prices. At launch in late 1908, the Model T came in Touring, Runabout, Coupe and Town body styles, ranging in price from $825 (for the least expensive Runabout) to $1,000 (for the better-equipped Town variant). In 1912, Ford introduced the Model T Delivery, with an enclosed van-style body, at a price of just $700. Other Model T prices fell as production increased, too, and in 1912 the range began with the $590 Model T Roadster and topped out at the $900 Model T Town Car. With a few year-on-year exceptions, prices for the Ford Model T fell consistently throughout its production run, even as annual wages increased. When Model T production ended in 1927, prices ranged from $360 for the Runabout to $545 for the family-friendly Fordor body style.
1917 Model T, showing its versatility with the non-factory goat carrier.
Over the course of the Model T’s 19-year run, Henry Ford had managed to transform the automobile from a hand-built novelty affordable only by the wealthy to a mass-produced commodity, attainable by nearly anyone with an average-paying job. Along the way, Ford set production records, topping two million Model Ts built in 1917, five million in 1921 and a staggering 10 million in 1924; when production ended in 1927, more than 15 million Model Ts had been built, a record that stood until 1972 when the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed this production mark. The very consistency that had helped Ford to sell Model Ts ultimately became the car’s undoing; as the “Roaring Twenties” began to wind down, consumers were less and less enthralled by the car’s dated design and utilitarian functionality. Style was becoming important to car buyers, as were things like horsepower and braking ability, all areas where the Model T simply didn’t add up. Adding fuel to the fire, GM’s Alfred Sloan implemented a policy of yearly model changes, giving buyers more reasons to shop competing brand Chevrolet.
Henry Ford himself was largely to blame for the Model T’s stagnation, believing that any changes to the do-it-all, utilitarian Model T would negate the car’s recipe for success. Despite the Model T’s forward-looking multi-fuel engine and use of electric lighting (after 1910), Ford steadfastly refused to implement more efficient hydraulic brakes and a larger or more powerful engine. When Ford begrudgingly ended Model T production in May of 1927 (displacing some 60,000 workers as the factory retooled to produce the Model A), critics believed that Ford’s long dominance of the affordable car market was over. Henry Ford’s next innovation, the Ford Model A, would soon prove them wrong.
Had Henry Ford not implemented the moving assembly line, it’s likely that another manufacturer would have. Likewise, the issue of affordable transportation for the masses would have been embraced, sooner or later, by another make and model of automobile. That the Model T helped pioneer both, along with attributes like stronger steels, a separate cylinder head and engine block, and true multi-fuel functionality mean that the Model T will forever be remembered as a pioneering automobile that helped shape the future of both the automotive industry and the American landscape.