Well then just BUY a Model T. They aren’t rare, Ford made millions of them. The vintage market has a huge amount that fewer and fewer folks want anymore.
You can buy a nice driver for about the same as a basic small car, $10,000 or so. EBay can help you out.
You will need a truck and trailer to go get one, They can’t get to highway speeds and aren’t reliable enough to drive any great distance, but they never were.
My grandpa used to brag that he made it from Vincennes, IN to Terre Haute (50 miles) in only 3 hours in his Model T.
…and, with their 2-wheel brakes, you must…anticipate…emergency situations in order to avoid a collision.
Having said all that, Henry Ford got the price down to $300 or so at which level many Americans could actually afford a car!.
The rest of the world regards Henry Ford as a history maker, although he got the assembly line idea from visiting a Chicago meat pacing plant and was genius enough to visualize this system operating in REVERSE!
While I never before heard that story, it may well be true.
However, what is incontrovertible is that Ransom Olds was using a moving assembly line in his car factory about 1 year before Ford adopted the idea.
If not for the fact that the Olds plant burned to the ground, few people today would associate Ford’s name with the moving assembly line.
(Hint: “Moving” is the key word in that expression.)
That $300 Model T is $4200 in today’s dollars. About as much as a Tata Nano… also very basic transportation. Neither car passes any current regulation required of US cars. Although the Nano will top 60 mph and has 4 wheel brakes.
I think it was standardized parts as much as the assembly line. Parts were hand fitted a lot prior to that if my memory serves me. I did hear though that it wasn’t necessarily his idea but isn’t that the way it goes? History goes with those that take someone else’s idea and builds on it instead of putting it under a bushel basket. Windows for example?
Cadillac was the originator of standardized parts, but the moving assembly line didn’t come about until several years later.
The guys in the Caddy plant were able to install parts that were identical and consistent in quality–and that helped to build that marque’s reputation for high quality–but they worked on each car in “gangs” while the car was in a stationary position.
Back in the mid 70s a friend of mine found an original paint, running 1936 Ford pickup near Dodge City, KS and he bought it on the spot. Keep in mind the 36 Ford was a vast improvement over the Model T.
It was summertime and roughly a 100 degrees. He drove that truck back the roughly 225 miles to north central OK and it took him almost 8 hours non-stop other than for gas. He said it cruised right along at 40 MPH (and not so much on the uphills) and everyone on the planet was passing him; no doubt cursing him for holding up the works…
Agree, but Henry Ford integrated all those modern ideas to produce a car the ordinary US citizen could hope to afford. That’s the part that is remembered.
In a slaughterhouse they do have moving “disassembly lines”. It’s an incredibly efficient process, although I would not want to work there.
Maybe this makes me the same age as your grandpa. But when I was a kid and my folks wanted to take a trip to the big town about 60 miles away to go shopping, it was an all-day event. It would take 2-3 hours to get there, and 2-3 hours to get back. Add 4 hours of shopping, an all day affair.
The reason it took that long had nothing to do w/the car’s performance. The car could easily go 70 mph and was perfectly reliable for a 60 mile drive. The problem, it was all the stoplights. Every single town along the way had a dozen stoplights to contend with.
Once the freeway bypassed all those small towns, it immediately became an hours drive each way.
Yeah I think that’s what I meant. It wasn’t necessarily Henry’s idea but he implemented them in a massive scale. Plus of course deep vertical integration to control all of the parts-even tried tires.
I think the concept of standardized parts goes back to Eli Whitney who made muskets for the government and even he did not originate that concept.
They were cheap and simple. Reliable? Only in someone’s nostalgic dreams. Neither were they particularly durable, often needing engine rebuilds at around 10,000 miles.
Okay, fair enough, B.L.E. but because this forum is supposed to be about cars, I thought it was implied that I was referring to standardized parts in cars.
Agree! Even the cars of the thirties were very unreliable by today’s standards, and often needed rings and valves at only 50,000 miles.
Consumer Reports some time back had an article called “They don’t make them the way they used to, thank God!”. It compared early postwar and 50s cars with today’s vehicles.
Our 1941 Chevy needed rings, valves, 3 exhaust stems, rear end overhaul, water pump, starter generator, radiator, and a lot of other little things all before 100,000 miles. We liked the car and its reliability was considered average!
Remember, nearly all gas stations in the past were also repair shops!
I’m surprised that this vehicle
and the many similar vehicles aren’t being allowed on rural roads and in suburban neighborhoods across the country. But cheap and simple is overwhelmed with the sales pitch “get the vehicle you deserve with nothing down and 84 months of interest free financing.”
When I was a kid–back in the '50s–it was still pretty common for people to have to do a “ring & valve job” on their cars by 50k miles.
Because they have the crash protection of a cigar box, and the pollution production of a semi?