FORD
Ford Motor
The revolutionary Model T changed America and the world. Then it almost ruined Ford.
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.usatoday.com/gcdn/presto/2019/12/23/PDTF/c302642e-3668-4551-81c3-391f32100f05-Mark_Phelan_01.jpg?crop=1223,1223,x0,y0&width=48&height=48&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
Detroit Free Press
In a high-security room on the third floor of a factory in Detroit’s bustling Milwaukee Junction industrial neighborhood in 1907, six men and a 14-year-old boy changed the world.
![Henry Ford in his Piquette Plant office.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.usatoday.com/gcdn/presto/2023/08/19/PDTF/5a276833-5d8c-4cc5-b351-287b8c779e56-Henry_Ford_in_Piquette_office.jpg?width=660&height=345&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
In less than a year — Oct. 1, 1908 — the first Ford Model T would roll out of the plant on Piquette Avenue. The factory turns 120 years old in 2024.
The Model T wasn’t just a new vehicle. It was the fulfillment of Henry Ford’s lifelong quest to produce affordable, reliable vehicles, thus transforming the automobile from a rich man’s toy — and cars were nearly exclusively for men in 1908, despite Henry's wife Clara Ford’s penchant for driving her personal electric car around Detroit — to transportation for the masses.