The Model T.

In 1908 Henry Ford introduced the model that would become the low-cost automobile every middle-class American could afford, the Model T. By the time it was discontinued in 1927, more than fifteen million Model T's had been sold, and its price had dropped from $850 to $290. Ford's innovative production methods and labor policies revolutionized American manufacturing, just as his product revolutionized American lifestyles. For rural people the Model T became a lifeline to social activity, amusements, and work away from the farm. City people, meanwhile, did not acquire the car habit in large numbers until the 1920s, which was also the period when Ford finally gave up his insistence on thrift and prudence, and allowed his dealers to offer an early form of installment-plan purchases. In the 1910s Ford was not the only company to offer Americans the popular new form of transportation. In 1910 Sears...