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Men like King, along with a whole slew of other engineers, volunteered their time to Ford's projects. King provided Ford with a whole crew of workers who worked in the makeshift machine shop Ford had
constructed in his garage behind his Bagley Avenue residence in Detroit.
Ford even convinced his neighbor, Felix Julian, to donate his half of the shed to the cause. King was building his own vehicle at the time, and actually preempted Ford in testing the horseless carriage in March of 1896. Ford followed King's carriage's test run on his bicycle. Ford did make one major innovation in building his first vehicle: he decided not to attach an engine to an existing carriage, but rather to construct a four-wheel body based on the principles of bicycle manufacturing. Ford completed his "Quadricycle" early in the morning on this day in 1896. He couldn't wait to test the invention. Only one of his associates, Jim Bishop, was present at the time of the vehicle's completion. In all of his enthusiasm in getting the car together, Ford failed to consider that his contraption was wider than the doors of the shed in which he built it. He and Bishop set upon the door and adjacent walls with axes in order to hack an entrance sufficient for the Quadricycle. The 500-pound, two-cylinder vehicle came to life in the alley behind Ford's house. Ford drove it down Bagley Avenue to Grand River Avenue, to Washington Boulevard, when the Quadricycle stopped. Bishop and Ford pushed the automobile to the Edison plant, where they replaced a nut and spring that had come loose. The next month, Henry drove his vehicle to his father's farm to show it off. His father apparently walked around it cautiously. Later he expressed his doubts to one of his neighbors: "John and William (Henry's brothers) are all right, but Henry worries me. He doesn't seem to settle down, and I don't know what's going to become of him." Maybe he'll become the most powerful citizen in the country!
1893 Ford's First Engine
Henry Ford completed his first successful gasoline engine. He and his wife tested the engine in their kitchen on Christmas Eve. Ford's first automobile took its inaugural drive on
June 4, 1896
1927 The People's Car
Production of the Ford Model T officially ended after 15,007,033 units had been built. The Model T sold more units than any other car model in history, until the Volkswagen
Beetle eclipsed its record in the 1970s. That a car produced domestically in the first three decades of the century could compete in production numbers with a car first produced in the '60s and distributed worldwide
is testament to the dramatic genius of the Model T. Before the introduction of the "Tin Lizzie," no car was reliable or affordable enough to be any good to the average man. In 1908, the Model T had a price
tag of $850 and sold 6,389 units. In 1910, the price had dropped to $690 and the Tin Lizzie sold 34,528 units. By 1915, the price tag of Ford's "people's car" had reached an astounding $350 and sold,
accordingly, 472,350 units. Henry Ford's mass-production miracle even exceeded his own prophetic expectations. The Model T may have accomplished what the Monroe Doctrine only proposed. Here is Henry Ford's vision:
"I will build a motor car for the great multitude, constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise ... so low in price that no man
making a good salary will be unable to own one--and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces
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