On May 26, 1927, the Ford assembly line produced its last Model T automobile after after 19 years of production, during which around 15 million vehicles had been built.
The final Model T was driven personally by its originator, Ford Motor Car founder Henry Ford, with his son, Edsel Ford, to the Dearborn Engineering Laboratory in Highland Park, Michigan, were it joined the first automobile Henry Ford ever built in 1896 and the 1908 protototype for the Model T.
The Model T was notable for being the first automobile to be priced in a range that was accessible to middle-class Americans. The price was made possible by Ford's fabrication process, which included assembly line production instead of individual hand-building. Ford's engineering team, which included engineers Childe Harold Wills, Henry Love, C. J. Smith, Gus Degner and Peter E. Martin, and Hungarian immigrant engineers Joseph A. Galamb, Eugene Farkas, Gyula Hartenberger, and Károly Balogh also designed the automobile to make use of affordable, completely interchangeable parts.
After 1914, Ford also famously offered the Model T in any color "so long as it is black" as an additional cost-cutting solution. Early models produced between 1908 and 1912, however, were available in gray, green, blue, and red. The 1912 version, shown here in this selection from the catalog 'Vanadium Steel: Some Interesting and Profitable Facts That Everyone Should Know About This Remarkable Product" shows the intermediate color choice; midnight blue with black fenders.
This catalog is part of Hagley Library's large collection of trade catalogs, which contains materials dating from 1783 to 1988 and includes catalogs, trade literature, and lists, often illustrated, of items sold by an assortment of manufacturers, mostly American. To view a selection of digitized materials from this collection, just click here.