October 1908: The Day the Ford Model T Went on Sale

This piece stays on the launch itself: the announcement, the price sheet, the factory and the first months of output. For the full production run, start with when the Model T was made.

What happened on October 1, 1908

The launch was an advertising event before it was a delivery event. On October 1, 1908, Ford ran its first Model T advertisements in Life and The Saturday Evening Post, two of the widest-read national magazines of the day. The theme was "High Priced Quality in a Low Priced Car." The ground had been prepared for months: newspaper promotion of the coming car had started in January 1908.

Ford also had its own channel. Norval Hawkins, who ran sales and distribution full time from 1907 to 1918, started the company magazine Ford Times in 1908 and kept building the dealer and branch network that James Couzens had begun. Those dealers were not salesmen in the modern sense. Many were machinists, blacksmiths, livery men and hardware merchants, and Ford required them to stock parts and train at Ford schools. That requirement mattered more than any advertisement once the cars reached owners who had never kept a machine running.

The same date, October 1, is the one Ford gives for the first customer delivery. Who that customer was is not on the record this article relies on, and no name should be attached to it without a document.

The 1908 Ford Model T on the price sheet

The car on offer was Henry Ford's ninth production model and the first one designed for the mass market. Earlier Fords had been lettered from A through S, which is why the 1903 Model A and the 1928 Model A share a name and nothing else.

The prices are the line that made the car. At $850 for a touring car, the Model T sat against a market where most cars cost $2,000 or more. What the buyer got for the money was four-cylinder engine, a transmission a novice could manage, and a front axle of drop-forged vanadium steel, an alloy lighter and stronger than ordinary carbon steel. Ford had first used vanadium on the 1907 Model N, so the metallurgy was not new to the company. Putting it under a car at this price was.

The planetary transmission was described at the time as a "three speed," counting reverse. Modern writers call it a two-speed, and both are describing the same gearbox.

Built in September, sold in October, called a 1909

Three dates get blended in most retellings, and each one is correct for a different event.

The first production Model T was completed at the Piquette Avenue Plant on September 27, 1908, four days before the public introduction. One source puts the build of that first car on August 12, 1908, a date with less support than the September completion. The car was introduced on October 1. And because Ford sold these cars as 1909 models, a launch-year car built in the autumn of 1908 can carry 1909 on its paperwork and be entirely correct.

That last point causes real confusion today. A seller describing a "1908 Model T" may be describing a car built in 1908, which is honest, or using the year as a marketing hook for a later car, which is not. The serial number settles it. The earliest cars ran from about number 1 to 2,500 between October 1908 and April 1909, and the number is stamped on the engine between the center exhaust ports.

"Ford's records say September 27 for the first car and October 1 for the launch. Both are right. The mistake is treating them as the same day, and then adding a model year that says something else again."

Tom Ramirez

A slow start at Piquette

The demand story is the part of the launch most in need of a careful hand. The usual figure is 15,000 orders, and the sources agree on the number more than on the timing. The Henry Ford says dealers held 15,000 orders, nearly twice Ford's total sales of the previous year, before the factory had built a single car. Wikipedia places the same 15,000 within two days of release. Either way it is a count of orders, not of cars, and it should be read as a round figure.

The supply side is better documented. Piquette Avenue was not yet a volume plant. Only 11 cars were built in the first full month of production. Output rose from there, and nearly 12,000 Model Ts were built at Piquette before production moved to the new Highland Park plant, which had been designed in 1908 and opened in 1910. Nevins and Hill count 17,771 Ford cars for 1909, a Ford fiscal-year figure, and 32,053 for 1910.

Those numbers belong in the launch story because they show what the October announcement was. It was a promise made on paper by a company that could not yet keep it in metal. The moving assembly line came years later at Highland Park. In 1908 the cars were still assembled the old way, and buyers waited.

The earliest of those cars also differed from what came after. The first 800 had two foot pedals and two control levers, with the second lever working reverse, before Ford moved reverse to a pedal. Those first examples are covered in detail under the two-lever cars.

Reading a launch-year car today

A car from the first months of production is a different object from a Model T of 1915 or 1925, and it should be judged by different evidence.

The launch also sits at the start of a longer line. Ford would build the Model T in the United States until May 26, 1927, when Highland Park built its last one, and then replace it with a new Model A, so the October 1908 car is the first chapter of Ford's cars from 1908 to 1931. The price would fall over that run, from $850 at launch to $260 for the 1925 runabout.

Survivors from the first year are scarce and are priced on documentation more than condition. Anyone shopping should compare what is offered among early Model Ts for sale against the serial range above before taking any "first year" claim at face value. The launch date is certain. Whether a given car belongs to it is a matter for the records.

Sources and notes

• The Henry Ford: Ford's Model T, a car for the great multitude
• The Henry Ford: Advertising the Model T
• The Henry Ford: 1909 Ford Model T touring car (collection record)
• Ford Motor Company: The Model T
• Jalopnik: the Model T price in 2021 dollars
• Wikipedia: Ford Model T