Tin Lizzie Tales

...It is a masterpiece in many different ways...

...Ford, surrounded by yes-men—his best designers and production men began defecting to Chevrolet—was persuaded at last by his clever son Edsel to discontinue “T” production in 1927...

...This is an oft told tale...

...And there are no false notes in this book...

...But to stop the car in motion, one had to use a pedal that applied direct force to the transmission instead of to the wheels...

...By the twenties, however, this attitude led to falling sales...

...That was a very tall order, given what Casey calls the “abysmal thoroughfares” of the day: roads that were “dusty in dry weather, muddy morasses in the rain, and creased with frozen ruts in the winter...

...In making technical procedures superbly clear, this section of the book is nothing less than a minor tour de force...

...There was no heater...

...What he does is to explain the pictures, prompting the reader to look and look again at these revealing glimpses of Ford mass production at work...

...The ruggedness, the sheer primitivism, of the Model T seemed worse with every passing year...

...You had to check the level of the gas by using a dipstick—a very hard (and dangerous) thing to do at night...

...Casey also describes the manufacturing process that produced the Model T. He tackles the job of explaining industrial procedures by using architectural diagrams and photographs of the assembly fl oor as Ford shifted it around from year to year...

...As early as 1914 an independent publication called The Fordowner did a lively business giving troubleshooting tips to Ford drivers...

...Through the limited task of presenting this centennial study, Casey has found a way to write an exemplary work that has synthesized biography, corporate history, cultural commentary, engineering analysis, and elements of psychology—individual and social—without a trace of intellectual pretension...

...Before long, it had worldwide appeal...

...Richard Striner, professor of history at Washington College, is the author, most recently, of Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery...

...He resisted credit sales, which he regarded as bad for the morals of his customers...

...To check the oil, you had to crawl under the car and open two completely separate petcocks...

...Like a reed bending in the wind,” Casey writes, “the Ford chassis twisted with the ruts, holes, and bumps of American roads, but did not break...

...As to the latter, Ford advertising made a pitch to the feminist movement of the times...

...Ford’s solution was to build a very fl exible vehicle of lightweight but sturdy vanadium steel with ingenious triangular shapes in the suspension that distributed weight so remarkably well that the undercarriage of the Model T (the “chassis”) could deliver the contortions that were needed on the horrible surface of the roads...

...But he did so bitterly...

...He developed a horror of the personal freedom that the Model T might provide...

...The personalizing of the sales campaign around the fi gure of Ford himself—the famous “Ford script” logo made it seem as if Henry signed every car as an individual work of art—sent the message that a rugged individualist was empowering the common man (and common woman) everywhere...

...Casey concludes that he “saw the tough, utilitarian, slowly evolving Model T as not only all the car that people would ever need—it was all the car they should ever want...

...Robert Casey’s powers of description make it easy for us to imagine what it must have been like when the driver had to race from the front of the car after cranking the engine to adjust the faraway “spark lever” on the steering column...

...The Model T succumbed to competition by the 1920s, and Ford was resistant to change...

...Very dangerous, and Casey’s book makes all of this beautifully clear...

...Ford the liberator was at war with Ford the punitive paternalist...

...No longer a ‘shut in,’ she reaches for an ever wider sphere of action—that she may be more the woman...

...It shows the brilliance and myopia that animated Henry Ford’s vision...

...Beginning with a survey of automobile technology in 1908, he shows how Ford found a way to adapt the best European automobile confi guration of the time—the “Mercedes-style” car, with a front-mounted engine—to the pocketbook of the American middleclass consumer and the dreadful conditions that prevailed on American roads...

...This could not go on...

...None at all...

...A 1915 Ford brochure called The Woman and the Ford proclaimed that “It’s woman’s day...

...But Ford the progressive and modernizer was, in many ways, tragically at odds with Ford the retrogressive crank...

...The author, Robert Casey, is transportation curator at The Henry Ford, the rather awkward new name for what used to be the Edison Institute, an organization founded by Ford himself “to convey the inspiration of American genius to the young...

...Was this dangerous...

...From Ford’s earlier shops to the ultra-modern Highland Park plant, designed by the architect Albert Kahn and built north of Detroit in 1908, to the immense River Rouge plant (1917), an industrial complex so utterly gigantic it contained its own internal steel mill, we behold the emergence of Henry Ford’s industrial empire...

...Instead of using the photographs to supplement explanatory text, Casey’s text is driven by the photographs...

...The car is a real weapon in the changing order...

...As Ford put it himself, he wanted to design a car that was “powerful enough for American roads and capable of carrying its passengers anywhere that a horse-drawn vehicle will go without the driver being afraid of ruining his car...

...There was no windshield wiper until Ford offered one that had to be cranked by hand as the driver tried to steer...

...BY RICHARD STRINER For the Model T Ford’s centennial year, Johns Hopkins University Press has produced an extremely handsome, short, and informative book about Henry Ford’s great creation...

...Casey has succeeded in examining the Model T from a variety of angles...

...The gas tank was under the car’s front seat, and there was no gas gauge provided...

...He had a “Sociological Department” investigate the private lives of his workers, lest they slip into decadence...

...Other fi rms embraced improvements that made their cars more comfortable and easier to drive, while Henry, by then the sole owner of the fi rm, became stubborn and defi ant, an out-of-touch autocrat...

...The car had to be cranked, and yet the crank could kick back and break your wrist...

...For this reason he resisted a number of improvements that could give his customers a carefree driving experience: He wished to “build their character” instead...

...They controlled the car’s “planetary transmission” (no gear-shift lever in the “T”) in coordination with the throttle lever on the steering column and the separate hand lever to the left of the driver that held the transmission in neutral while locking the emergency brakes on the rear wheels...

...The Model T Ford is especially effective in describing what it felt like to drive one...

...These features, combined with its low price, made the Model T Ford “a classic example of the right product at the right time...

...Or when the driver had to manage three different pedals on the fl oor...

...In some ways, Casey’s most interesting text is related to the selling of the car...

...These emergency brakes were intended to prevent the car from rolling in a stationary position...

...A short study of a man and his machine, The Model T Ford explores all the quirky contradictions of both...