'Faster horses' was Henry Ford's rationale of the car. He was not the designer of the model T(that was the work of his friend Childe Harold Willis, assisted by two hungarian emigres, Josef Galamb and Eugene Farkas), but it was an expression of his genius. By 1914 it took Ford only 93 minutes to assemble a car. Innovations were not technological nor aesthetic, but social and commercial. The Model Ts development was the US system in miniature: as sales rose, prices dropped. The first Model Ts were dark blue, but when Henry Ford discovered black paint dried more quickly, you could have one in any colour so long as it was black. Tough vanadium steel and simple components made it indestructible. By the Twenties, prices had fallen to less than $300. At one point in the car's 19 year life, more pages of the Sears Roebuck catalogue were devoted to Model T spare parts than to men's clothing.
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