Sublime

Henry Ford was one of several carmakers who saw an opportunity to build a vehicle that combined the power and ruggedness of a touring car with the low cost of a runabout (i.e., coming in at less than $1,000). His company had launched a successful two-passenger runabout, the Model N, in 1906 for $500, and followed it up with the essentially similar

Since 1893, when the Duryea brothers’ gasoline buggy first clattered over the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, there have been more than twelve hundred automobile companies and some two thousand different makes of cars. Today there are only six passenger-car makers. Why did the Ford company survive when twelve hundred others went out of busin

The Ford Model T was built so that every man could run it. Ford mass production made it available to everyone. Ford wages enabled everyone to afford it. The Ford $5 day rejected the old theory that labor, like other commodities, must be bought in the cheapest market. It recognized that mass producers are also mass consumers, that they cannot consum

In all, the Model T’s construction was decomposed into 7,882 separate tasks. This degree of specialization, combined with the regimented coordination of a moving assembly line, took mass production to new level of efficiency. Production time for a single vehicle fell from twelve hours to ninety-three minutes, with a new car rolling off the line eve

The Model T was not the cheapest car on the market when it went on sale—runabouts could be had for less—but it offered an unprecedented degree of power and durability for the price. It cost little more than a runabout, but it could handle hills and rutted country roads. Available as a runabout, a five-seater touring car, or a delivery van, all buil

We automobile men didn’t want to run a railroad, but we were driven to it because this appeared the best solution to a vexing problem. By 1920, Ford was producing a million cars a year—more than the railroads could swiftly deliver. The bottleneck was freight shipments.

Just as he had pioneered the assembly line, Ford also led the way in boosting blue-collar wages.

Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T was a fantastic innovation. But its biggest impact, by far, was turning ordinary people into drivers.

It was the great common sense that Mr. Ford could apply to new ideas and his ability to simplify seemingly complicated problems that made him the pioneer he was.