The Car That Changed America
I opened the Wall Street Journal the other day and was surprised to learn that October 1st marked 100 years since Ford’s Model T went on sale. The article by Paul Ingrassia was called, appropriately, “This Car Changed America” and it certainly did. But the ways it changed America are much more far-reaching than just introducing the assembly line or making cars affordable for the average person, as huge as those developments were. As Ingrassia said, The Model T put America on wheels, created mass mobility, revolutionized mass production, established the American middle class and eventually reshaped the country’s physical landscape with suburban sprawl.
In the two decades after Henry Ford began selling the Model T on Oct. 1, 1908, more than 15 million were built, a number that would only be surpassed by the VW Beetle. The biggest reason for its success, of course, was the price. The first Model T cost about $850; a comparable Chevrolet went for $1,000 or more. By 1922 Ford had cut the price to $250, while competitors were charging closer to $300. What made that possible was Ford’s famous moving assembly line, which wasn’t actually invented until 1913. With it came modern mass production, as well as Henry Ford’s equally famous pronouncement that customers could have “any color they want, as long as it’s black.” Up until 1913, the Model T had also been available in red, green and blue. Uniformity was a side effect of greater production efficiency.
One thing we may find odd today is the fact that when Ford began paying his assembly-line workers $5 a day in 1923, it was a then unheard-of sum, and led directly to creation of the American middle class. Ironically, that same mass production efficiency that helped build both America’s middle class and its industrial economy has now mostly been lost because of the cost of labor.
At the same time the Model T was helping to build the middle class, it was giving people increased mobility, allowing American families and businesses to go anywhere and everywhere they wanted. Eventually, with the Interstate Highway System of the 1950s, we gained real long-distance mobility. But it was the Model T that started us on the road toward sprawling development, the long commute into the city from the suburbs, the decline of a lot of city centers, and many of the other problems we now face including vehicle exhaust and the cost of gasoline.
I don’t mean to say the Model T was a bad thing. We obviously have all benefited from an increased standard of living and the greater freedom it helped bring about. But even a great idea can have unintended consequences. Sometimes this calls for a course correction; ultimately we need more innovative thinking to help us move forward. As another story on the anniversary from the Associated Press points out, Henry Ford himself learned this the hard way. David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said that while the Model T was popular and offered an affordable car to the masses, Ford may have tried to ride it a little too long, as consumers came to expect more upscale models with a wider variety of colors. He innovated. He brought this into the market,Cole said of Ford. “Then he got hit by others who innovated.
Is there a lesson here for our direct businesses? I’d like to hear what you think!
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F. Curtis Barry & Co. works with multichannel businesses to increase catalog profitability through the evaluation and implementation of order management systems, inventory management systems, warehouse management systems that match client objectives.
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