December 1927: The Week America Lined Up to See the Model A

That week matters because of what came before it. Ford had stopped building the Model T in the spring, closed its plants, and asked the country to wait without telling it what it was waiting for. The reasons for that gamble are a story of their own, and there is more on that here. This piece stays with the week itself: how Ford built the suspense, how the car finally appeared, and what the crowds actually saw.

Six months of silence

Ford announced the end of the Model T on May 25, 1927. The next day Henry and Edsel Ford drove the fifteen millionth Model T out of the Highland Park plant, and by early June the factories were shut. About 60,000 workers lost their jobs during the changeover. Assembly of the new car moved from Highland Park to the River Rouge complex in Dearborn, which meant new tooling, new lines and new habits on the floor.

The silence was expensive in a very visible way. In the week reported by Cram's Automotive Reports on November 19, 1927, Ford built 550 cars. In the same week a year earlier it had built 20,000. Chevrolet, which passed Ford in 1927 and sold more than a million cars that year, turned out 6,682 that week alone. Ford dealers had little to sell but parts, used cars and patience.

Production of the new car started in October. Henry Ford is said to have stamped the first engine, A-1, on October 20, 1927, and Ford's own release put the start of Rouge production at October 27, after what it called a three-month retooling. Either way, the run before Christmas was small. Only 5,275 engines had been made by January 1, 1928, and club records put the vehicle count from mid-October to the end of December at about 5,000. Most showrooms got a car to show, not a stack of cars to sell.

"What strikes me about that autumn is the nerve of it. Ford let its biggest rival have the whole market for half a year, and it bet that people would still be standing there when the curtain went up. They were."

Patrick Walsh

The five-day buildup

Ford did not trust the reveal to word of mouth. A five-day newspaper campaign began on November 28, 1927, with roughly $2 million spent on advertisements in about 2,000 newspapers. Each day revealed a little more, and the last installment, a large advertisement headed "First Pictures of the New Ford Car," ran on December 1, the day before the car went on display. Until that morning, readers had words but no picture.

Dealers got their own preparation. A large portfolio titled "Introduction of the New Ford Car" went out in late November, about 2,000 sets of 26 pages, each sheet 13 by 18 inches. It gave the men behind the counter something to point at while customers asked the questions everyone was asking: what does it look like, what does it cost, and when can I have one.

The car they were introducing owed a great deal to the president of the company. Edsel Ford directed the design of the body, and its proportions were described at the time as those of a "baby Lincoln." The full account of Edsel Ford's styling belongs in its own article, but it explains why people who had driven nothing but black Model Ts stopped on the sidewalk and stared.

December 2, 1927: the crowds

The new Ford went on public display on December 2, 1927, as a 1928 model. By Ford's own count, about 10 million people saw it in the first week. Another account says more than 9 million Americans visited Ford dealers that week. The two figures come from different sources and measure slightly different things, but they land in the same place: a sizable share of the country went out in December weather to look at a car.

In many cities the police had to direct traffic around showrooms. That detail, more than the totals, tells you what kind of week it was. A car dealer is not usually a place that needs crowd control. For a few days in December 1927, Ford dealers were.

What the crowds found was a car with almost nothing in common with the one they knew. The engine was a 200.5 cubic inch four rated at 40 horsepower, about twice the Model T's 20. There was a three-speed sliding-gear transmission instead of pedals, four-wheel brakes, a laminated safety glass windshield, and Houdaille hydraulic shock absorbers. Ford said no parts carried over from the Model T. For anyone who wanted the longer arc, there is a good account of how the Model T led to the Model A.

Prices, waits and the songs that followed

Price was the second shock, and a gentle one. The 1928 list ran from $385 for the Roadster and $395 for the Phaeton up to $550 for the Sport Coupe, with the Tudor and the standard and business coupes at $495. Those figures sat close to Chevrolet's 1927 range of $525 to $745. Not every body style on the price list was in the showroom that first week, though: Ford's announcement listed a Fordor at $585, but the first production Fordor, the two-window 60-A, was only built from May 1928. Sources disagree on exactly how many styles were offered at launch, with counts of six, seven and nine all in print.

Looking was easy. Buying was harder. With roughly 5,000 cars built by the end of 1927 and millions of interested people, orders piled up far faster than the Rouge could fill them. Ordinary buyers often waited months for delivery, because Ford was still raising output well into 1928. A famous customer could get a car by Christmas. Most people got a place in line.

The culture noticed. A 1928 song by Walter O'Keefe, "Henry's Made a Lady Out of Lizzie," marked the moment the rough old Tin Lizzie gave way to something with manners. It is a good measure of how the new Ford was received: not as a better appliance, but as a change in character.

What the launch week did and did not settle

It is tempting to say the crowds won the war with Chevrolet that week. They did not. Ford's 1927 sales finished below 500,000 cars, less than half of Chevrolet's, and TIME reported that Chevrolet's 1928 production was still ahead of Ford's. The changeover had also cost Ford more than $72 million by TIME's account. The launch filled the order books; it could not fill them overnight.

What the week settled was the question of whether people still wanted a Ford. They plainly did. Once the Rouge reached full speed, Ford passed Chevrolet in 1929 and took back first place in US sales, building 1,507,132 cars that year. The ten million who lined up in December 1927 were, in effect, the advance orders for that recovery.

Nearly a century later, the earliest cars from those first weeks are a small, sought-after group among collectors, recognized by details that Ford changed within months. If you want to see what survives from that first season, start with the early 1928 Model As for sale and look closely at the bumpers, the brake lever and the radiator shell. They are the cars people queued in the cold to see.

Sources and notes

• Ford Motor Company: The 1928 Ford Model A
• Mac's Motor City Garage: December 2, 1927, the Model A Ford is introduced
• The Henry Ford: advertisement, "First Pictures of the New Ford Car," December 1, 1927
• Model A Ford Club of America: "Early Birds," on the first Model As built in 1927
• Model A Ford Club of America: new car prices, 1928 to 1931
• The Henry Ford: sheet music, "Henry's Made a Lady Out of Lizzie," 1928