The Road to the Model T: Culture, Road Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the American Motor Age

In 1920, a single vehicle dominated the American market for automobiles: Ford's famous Model T. Plain, powerful, and utilitarian, its success peaked in 1923 when Model Ts accounted for almost 55 percent of American automobile production.1 Introduced in 1908 at $850, by 1923 the efficiencies of mass production had allowed Ford to cut the price of the Model T touring car to just $298, enabling automobile ownership in the United States to move steadily down the income ladder. Few could have foreseen this result twenty years earlier, however. Then, the first American motor vehicles, owned almost exclusively by wealthy elites, represented a dizzying variety of designs that inspired spirited debate over such basic technological questions as the best type of engine to use, where to locate it in the vehicle, and how best to design the vehicle's body. In recent years, scholars have generated a host of fresh insights into the shifting contours of the early auto industry, both before and after the advent of the Model T. Much of this work has been inspired by the observation that social context actively shapes definitions of technological merit and thus the success and failure of different technologies. Why did the internal combustion engine triumph over steam and electric alternatives?