To mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, we’re cataloging 25 objects that define the country’s history.
When the Ford Model T first hit the road in the early 1900s, it didn’t just change how Americans got around. It transformed the country itself. A version of that car from 1926 now sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History at the center of an exhibit about vehicles and transportation.
Here & Now’s Indira Lakshmanan visited the exhibit with the museum’s head curator, Kathleen Franz. They discussed how the car’s design made it a game-changer in American life.
4 questions with Kathleen Franz
What makes the name Henry Ford synonymous with the American car?
“He was really a populist and a tinkerer, and he knew that this would take off. So he wanted to create a car for the masses. He was from rural America, and he knew that people were buying cars to go to town to do their grocery shopping. And we live in a massive nation. And so he knew that the car was going to become the next wave of transportation. He was really a visionary.
“He invents what becomes called ‘Fordism,’ which is thinking about how to make these cars not just single one-off products or made in a craft shop, but really dividing up the labor: not completely de-skilling the labor, but breaking down the process. Moving it along a line, which reduces cost. They’re not craft projects made by buggy makers anymore. They’re industrial production.”
What was it about this car that made it so easy to manufacture?
“The Model T is really unique in the sense that it is an open car. And not just open on the top, but it doesn’t come with a ton of bells and whistles. Those were left to the consumer. It’s like your very basic model of something. And if you wanted the full down top, if you wanted the windshield wipers, or if you wanted better headlights, all of those things were add-ons. They were aftermarket additions.
“Around that springs up whole other industries like Western Auto, and places that consumers can buy those aftermarket products and add them on. In the Model T that we have, there’s no trunk. Trunks come later. So if you’re traveling across the country or even on short distances, maybe you want that. But Ford leaves that up to you.
”The 1926 Ford Model T was known as the cheapest car in America. It was $360. This truly was for a family — a middle-class family where maybe the person is a white-collar worker — an easy purchase. The second-hand version is going to people who are farmers. And farmers love the Model T because they can deconstruct it and use just the engine to run other things on the farm.”
Can you tell us more about the development of mass production that the Model T spawned?
“Gun manufacturing has long been using interchangeable parts. Other industries had experimented with dividing up labor. So one person just puts on tires. What Ford really does is bring everything together in this one production, and he makes it big.
“So yes, it does spread far and wide. And with that, it gets its own type of cultural criticism. So if you’ve seen ‘Modern Times’ with Charlie Chaplin trying to work on the assembly line, that’s a huge cultural critique of what it was like. It was very taxing on a human being when car manufacturers and others would try to speed up production. This really gives rise to workers organizing to protect their safety.”
Why is this car so important to telling the story of America?
“Since its inception in the early 20th century, the Model T has really stood in for Americans’ aspirations to have autonomous travel. To chart your destiny. To go where you want. And that industrial production and consumerism really supports that.
“The imaginary potential of the car is huge. You can go wherever you want, go however you want and stop whenever you want. And that really married to this idea of American freedom and destiny.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Will Walkey produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Walkey also produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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