January 14, 1928

This illustration was included with a story by Charles Vining  on the development of the “new” Ford car, the Model A. For 20 years the Ford Motor Company produced the Model T car. Henry Ford felt that this was the perfect car, so it did not need modifications to its style. It was more important to improve production so it could be sold at a lower price. However other car companies would make more luxurious (and more expensive) cars and introduced the concept of model years (where cars would change styling to encourage replacement). Henry Ford eventually had to give in to this market demand, and as the article stated, production of Model Ts stopped in May 1927 to focus on the Model A, which was introduced in October 1927 and first sold in December 1927. The article is an interview with Henry Ford dispelling the myths around its design, including:

  • They had to design the car in the May-October time frame in a panic to come up with something new (Ford claimed that it had been planned for 6 years).
  • That Henry Ford put on some overalls and did a lot of the work himself (people at the time loved the idea of Henry Ford as a self made man and liked to believe this would still be true. He had engineers to design it and the modern styling was left up to his son Edsel.)
  • The rest of the article deals with other rumours about how the price was determined ($710), how much was spent on production, and other plans for the future. But by this time, Ford (the company) was just like any other company with a bureaucracy to handle everything.

So all of the rumours were “bunk”.