![]() ![]() By the time the assembly line was put in place, new Model Ts were being created from start to finish in 93 minutes.īut that’s only part of the story. And that would be anywhere from 12.5 to 13 hours to make a Model T in 1908. Instead, a better comparison they should’ve made was to compare how long it took to make a car from scratch before and after the assembly line. It’s just that they had a lot being produced at once, so the end result was that there were a lot of them being cranked out. I mean, it’s not like it took literally 90 seconds to assemble a car from scratch. While that’s true, it’s not really a good comparison. The movie mentions it used to take 13 hours to make a car, but then the assembly line changed that to see a new car being completed every 90 seconds. That’s when something resembling what we think of as an assembly line really began to take off. That’s when Ford moved the assembly plant for the Model T to a new facility in Highland Park, Michigan. ![]() The year the movie gave was correct, too, in 1910. However, it was Henry Ford who built on that idea and transformed it into something revolutionary with the Model T. In fact, it was Oldsmobile’s founder, Ransom Olds, who is generally credited with inventing the assembly line for his Oldsmoble Curved Dash car in 1901. Although, again, this wasn’t something invented by Ford. Then, just like the movie says, in 1910, another major factor that went into the success of the Model T came to be. Initially, the Model T was made the same way every other car was-manually. Sure, that’s a lot of money, but it’s still cheaper than a lot of cars are even today!ĭays after the first Model T was released, some 15,000 or so orders were placed, making the Model T an instant hit. But that wasn’t the same Model A that was a prototype before the Model T.Ī big reason for the success of the Model T was because of the price point. Ford’s first car was the Model A, then there was the Model B, and so on…most of them were prototypes and didn’t ever make it to production, but by the time they hit Model T they were onto something.Īs a little side note, this can quickly get really confusing because Ford’s next big hit after the Model T was, in fact, the Model A-a car they produced starting in 1927. In fact, the name Model T itself implies there were other cars before it. It definitely wasn’t the first car to ever be made, but most historians agree it was the very first car to be widely available. The truth is that it was on October 1st, 1908 when the very first Ford Model T was produced. The basic idea the movie is trying to get across here is true, but there’s more to the story.įor example, I know the movie never tries to imply the Ford assembly line started in 1910, but I could also see how that’d be the message communicated from this opening sequence. ![]() Only after this slideshow introduction do we get some text on screen to give us context: This is New York City in the year 1910. The ability to take a process that used to take a long time and refine it to a point to where you could crank out results. It was the assembly line that built the car. But then, in just five years, they were turning out a new vehicle every 90 seconds.Īccording to the voiceover, the real invention here wasn’t really the car itself. The narrator continues explaining that when Henry Ford first conceived of the Model T, it took 13 hours to assemble. You could get it in any color you wanted-as long as you want black. You could learn how to drive it in less than a day. A narrator says they called it the car for every man. Our story today opens with some black and white photography of old cars. ![]()
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