Ford's small wonder
The Times of India — January 16, 2008

The launch of the Nano falls on the centenary of Henry Ford's remarkable 1908 launch of the Model T automobile. R Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, draws parallels

The Indian automotive industry has attracted global interest with game-changing events recently. 2008 also happens to be the centenary year of a dramatic event in the history of automobiles. In January 1908, word leaked out about a remarkable new vehicle that would be made by Henry Ford. In March, the company sent an introductory brochure to its dealers about the plan to "shortly produce a four-cylinder, 20 horsepower, five-passenger touring car" for a shockingly low price of $850. Cars were sold for $2,500 at that time. On October 1, 1908, the Saturday Evening Post carried the first national advertisement for the new car. The rest is history. Henry Ford’s dream — "I will build a motor car for the great multitude" — took shape.

Those were different times. Around 1900, one million bicycles were sold each year. Horses deposited 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine on the streets of New York every day. Health officials in Rochester estimated that if all the manure that its 15,000 horses produced were gathered in one place, it would rise 175 feet over an acre of ground and breed 16 billion flies. More than 80 per cent of the byways used for motorised transport in the US were neither paved nor graded. In fact, most of what passed off as roads was little more than ruts in the dirt.

There was opposition to the popularity of cars. The August 9, 1902 issue of Minneapolis Journal reported how a Minnesotan driving a car was shot in the back by locals opposed to the auto. The farm magazine, Breeder’s Gazette, in its issue dated August 24, 1904 described the new owners of cars as "a reckless, bloodthirsty, villainous lot of purse-proud crazy trespassers".

The then president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson, who went on to become US president, was reported by the New York Times to have stated, "Nothing has spread socialist feelings in this country more than the use of the automobile... These owners are a picture of the arrogance of wealth, with all its independence and carelessness".

The North American Review revealed in 1906 that more Americans had died in car accidents in the first half of the year than had perished in the entire Spanish-American War. "Unfortunately, our millionaires, and especially their idle and degenerate children, have been flaunting their money in the faces of the poor," the paper thundered.

It was in such a context that Henry Ford wrote in The Automobile magazine in January 1906: "The greatest need today is a light, low-priced car with an up-to-date engine of ample horsepower and built of the very best material... one that is in every way an automobile and not a toy."

Master draftsman Joseph Galamb recalled in his Reminiscences what Henry Ford had said to him: "I've got an idea to design a new car Joe. Fix a place for yourself on the third floor, way back, and a special room. Get your board up there and a blackboard and we’ll start working on a new model."

The Experimental Room grew more and more crowded as sketches turned into blueprints for the parts until, as a resourceful designer and machinist Jimmy Smith recalled, "It became a room about 12 feet by 15 feet, big enough to get a small car in, milling machines, drill presses and lathes."

Henry Ford insisted that automobiles had until then been built too heavy. Design simplicity and newer materials could reduce the weight of a car. In early 1908, 40 workers assembled the car at Ford’s Piquette Avenue factory.

Archie Terrell was one of the first to test drive the car and he returned exhilarated. "That is a wonderful car," he gushed. Orders flooded into Piquette Avenue and 300 vehicles were produced in 1908. By the time the factory was geared up for full production, there were far more orders than the company could fulfil.

Such was the impact created by Ford's dream car that humorist Will Rogers once said on radio: "Ford changed the habits of more people than Caesar, Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Xerxes, Amos 'n' Andy, and Bernard Shaw."