Fast facts: The Ford Model T and the plants that built it
The story of the Model T is central to how Detroit became the Motor City. Here are some fast facts about Ford Motor Co.'s early days, the Model T and early factories.
Key Model T dates
1903: Henry Ford creates Ford Motor Co.
1904: Ford builds the Piquette Avenue Plant in the Detroit neighborhood of Milwaukee Junction, just east of Woodward Avenue. The plant was made of brick and timber and designed by Field, Hinchman & Smith of Detroit, according to the Piquette Avenue Plant Museum. It opened in 1906 and Ford produced 8,729 cars there that year.
1904: Ford's "first international plant" is built in Walkerville (now Ontario), Canada, according to the automaker's corporate website, "right across the Detroit River from existing facilities." It was "a separate organization with its own set of shareholders" and was created to sell vehicles in Canada and "across the then-current British Empire."
Oct. 1, 1908: The first Model T is produced at the Piquette Avenue Plant. A team of engineers, designers and machinists created the vehicle with Henry Ford, and the team also planned at this site what would become the moving assembly line.
1910: Model T production is moved to the new and much larger Highland Park Plant, designed by Detroit architect Albert Kahn and nicknamed the "Crystal Palace" because of the number of glass windows used in its roofs and walls. The new plant is four miles north of the Model T's home, which, according to the Piquette Avenue Plant Museum, is later sold to Studebaker.
1914: The moving assembly line at Highland Park produces 34,858 Model Ts — an 82% increase from Piquette’s output.
1917: Ford introduces a truck, the Model TT, based on the Model T.
1927: The last Model T is manufactured. It is replaced by a new version of the Model A, which went into production in 1928 at the new River Rouge Assembly plant in Dearborn, which still produces vehicles today.
Model T by the numbers
$850: Price of the first Model T in 1908. The car’s base price fell from $525 in 1913 to $440 in 1914, $390 in 1915 and $345 in 1916, thanks to the moving assembly line and other improvements in efficiency.
14: The number of auto assembly plants in 1908 in the 3.5-square-mile Milwaukee Junction neighborhood of Detroit, where the Model T was just going into production. Other brands operating at the time included Cadillac, Hupmobile, Detroit Electric and Dodge Bros.
25: The number of auto parts plants in the same neighborhood at the same time.
$5 a day: What Henry Ford raised workers' pay to at the Highland Park plant in 1914, mainly to stop other factories from stealing its best workers.
Nearly 70,000: Peak number of employees working at the Highland Park Plant after Ford instituted the $5 day wage increase in 1914.
90 minutes: The time it took to build a Model T using the moving assembly line. That time is down from a whopping 12 ½ hours in pre-assembly line days.
2,090,338: The peak number of Model Ts produced, in 1923, at the Highland Park Plant.
1.5 million: Detroit's population in 1930, compared with 500,000 in 1910 before Model T production ramped up and brought workers from around the globe to Detroit.
15 million: The number of Model Ts sold between 1908 and 1927.
Detroit Free Press Auto Critic Mark Phelan and Staff Writer Chanel Stitt contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Fast facts: Ford Model T and the plants that built it
