In its early days, the company produced merely a few cars a day at their factory in Detroit. Groups of two to three men assembled components, taking up to 12 hours to construct each car. Ford’s vision was to build a car for the masses; one that the ordinary man could acquire.

In 1908 he unveiled his Model T, a vehicle that would initiate a new era in personal transportation. His automobile was reasonably priced, dependable, and efficient. Demand for the Model T grew so rapidly that Ford began looking for ways to innovate and adapt.

In 1913, the first continuous moving assembly line was introduced at the Ford Motor Company’s production facility in Highland Park, Michigan. Here, precision manufacturing, standardized parts, and a division of labor into three shifts allowed for efficient manufacture. Ford’s assembly line revolutionized automobile production by drastically reducing assembly time per vehicle to 93 minutes, which in turn lowered costs.

By 1921, Ford Motor Company was the largest automobile manufacturer in the world. Henry Ford had come to create an infrastructure for the auto industry. By inventing the dealer-franchise system to sell and service his cars and formulating a minimum wage scheme at double the average of the industry, automobiles were becoming accessible to all.

By the time production of the Model T ceased in 1927, more than 15 million cars, half of the world’s output, had been sold. A middle class had developed and urbanization was underway, as people could now drive to work in the cities. The automobile had evolved from luxury item of the wealthy into essential transportation for the ordinary man.

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