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Good clip. It’s amazing that if we look at a car as merely a transportation device, things are cheaper, faster and efficient as it once was.
The reality is that a car not just a transportation device. It’s a pleasure device, ego helper and ‘home on wheels’.
Clearly, a big contributor to cost is – safety, but safety itself has not been the only cost factor.
For anyone who thinks Auto industry labor is a piece of cake, and Unions are not needed, I suggest you take a look at the work these men are doing. Certainly it is easier today, but the Unions were a big part of worker safety and work load. Trying to explain assembly line work to someone is difficult, you just have to experience it. Nice video
#2, Highhawker: I remember a friend of mine who worked for about four hours at Ford’s Dearborn Rouge Plant. His job was to put the differential drain plugs in rear axles as they passed overhead. If he missed one he had a bin of yellow tags next to him which he was to hook over the axle so the plug could be installed later down the line. At the lunch whistle he turned around and looked behind him and saw that he had hung more yellow tags than installed plugs. He went out to lunch and never went back.
$950.00? That’s about $42,000 in today’s dollars. Cost has come WAY down considering what you get in a cay now.
Damn I’m getting old. My Grandfather, who’s been dead for thirty years once had a small garage that only worked on model T’s.
This video downloaded so slow I said screw it.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that YouTube servers have been really slow lately. They have a bunch of HD clips on there and you have to wait for the whole thing to download before you can watch it. Their servers barely keep up with low quality streaming.
Al Gore Sr. was there as a baby denouncing it as a risky scheme that would destroy the environment.
Didn’t Ford get the cost down to about $500.
Interesting side notion: The value of $950 in 1908 is about $22,100 in today’s bucks according to the Consumer Price Index.
If uyou figure it inn terms of Unskilled Wages, it’s like today’s $95,000.
As a chunk of the GDP, it equates to about $435,000.
Somewhere in there…
That was actually a good video. Better than what I’d see on Discovery.
I’d put the VW Beetle in the same ‘special’ category as the Model T. Cheap to buy, operate & repair. Damned near indestructible as well. Too bad environmentalists killed it off.
“I’d put the VW Beetle in the same ’special’ category as the Model T.”
Hmmm, well no doubt the Model T had a few more features than the Model A (What happened to the Models B thru S? ). But these models were your basic gas burning ox carts, without most of the creature features we come to expect today, like heating and air conditioning. So I wouldn’t exactly say it was same as a 1960s VW. More like an old candle stick rotary telephone, compared to today’s iPhone cell phone. Functional, but just barely useful.
We need men like Henry Ford these days. True entrepenuer his company was a matter of personal pride and he dedicated his life to it’s well being. Nowadays all we got are some shameless con artists for CEO’s whose only concern is their own well being.
Less than one minute in and a couple of quick notes.
Ford did not “invent” or even “improve” the assembly line. It had been defined by the engineer, Fredrick Taylor during the 1870s but first successfully used by Eli Whitney in the early 1800s to make rifles for the US Army.
Karl Benz was mass producing automobiles since 1895. There was much more hand craftwork involved, but his automobiles were aimed at a higher class. Ford aimed his autos at the middle class who only wanted a vehicle, not a luxury model.
Although Ford sold many cars, his refusal to adapt newer innovations cost him sales and allowed other companies to surpass his in sales and quality.
The “Model T” did not bring us from the horse and buggy era into the modern one by itself. It might have been a major influence but not the only one. Also included were the electric light and telephone.
#9. Yes. They came down to ~$500 and you could buy a well maintained used one during the depression for $50. I drove one recently, I was impressed – it had a very high ride height and no shock absorbers but it drove all day in top gear and the narrow tires gave good traction.