Ford’s Model T

On October 1, 1908, the first mass-produced Model T automobile drove off Henry Ford’s Piquette Avenue assembly plant in Detroit, revolutionizing interchangeable parts production methods, while delivering the first affordable automobile to road-hungry middle-class Americans.

Colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie, when the Model T first hit the streets, American roads, or what at the time passed for roads, saw fewer than 200,000 cars across the entirety of the United States, limited exclusively to wealthy Americans who could afford such a luxury.

How Much did a Model T Cost?

While Henry Ford’s first Model Ts off his assembly line were initially reasonably expensive—$825.00 or roughly $23,000.00 in today’s money—by 1925, the cost per automobile had plummeted to $260.00 each.

The Model T’s 22-horsepower, four-cylinder engine was made of a new kind of heat-treated steel pioneered by French race car makers, which reduced the car’s overall weight to just under 1,200 pounds.

By offering just one model and one color to the driving public—“any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants,” Ford used to joke, “so long as it was black”—Henry Ford employed a system of interchangeable parts and a moving assembly line that made it possible for unskilled laborers to crank out thousands of cars every week.

By 1924, workers at the River Rouge Ford plant in Dearborn Michigan could cast more than 10,000 Model T cylinder blocks each and every day.

How Ford’s Model T Contributed to the Culture of the Roaring Twenties

As the 1920s roared to life with unabashed prosperity for most Americans, the car-buying public began to crave cars with more style and luxury and speed than the Model T could offer, and as tastes began to change, the era of the Model T came to an end when the last one rolled off Ford’s assembly line on May 26th, 1927.

Between 1908 and 1927, however, Henry Ford produced some 15 million Model T cars, making it the longest production run of any automobile model in history, until the Volkswagen Beetle hit the streets in 1972.