"You can paint it any color, so long as it's black," said Henry Ford. That is what he told his production managers shortly before the first Model T was assembled at the Ford plant on Piquette Avenue in Detroit on October 1, 1908. These were to be no-frills cars: tough, reliable, inexpensive, and all more or less the same.

      There has never been an automobile like the Model T Ford and, doubtless, never will be again. The old "Tin Lizzies," as their owners were fond of calling them, coughed, sputtered, rumbled, and sometimes kicked like a mule, but they just kept going and going. At a time when many of the country's roads were nothing more than cleared paths through the woods, the Model T was ready for anything. No hill was too steep for it, no mud hole too deep. People drove their Lizzies not just for years but for decades. When the original black bodies finally rusted through and fell off, the owners rigged up wooden cabs and the old cars kept on chugging.

      Selling for as little as three hundred dollars, Ford's Model Ts were so cheap that almost any family could afford one. It was the Model T that drew ordinary Americans onto the highways, that finally dragged American men down out of their saddles and ended their love affair with the horse. They would have a new mistress now, the same one they still have today: the automobile.

      Although it brought happiness to millions and an incredible energy to the American economy, the ubiquitous Model T was no happy accident. It was, in fact, a stroke of genius, the idea of a single man: Henry Ford.

      When Ford was born in 1863, Abraham Lincoln was still president of the United States and the outcome of the Civil War still far from decided. Ford grew up in Michigan at a time when more than 80 percent of Americans made their livings on the family farm and the most commonly known machine was the harvester. It was the horse and the mule that kept this America moving. Ford would be foremost among those who would change all that.

      At the age of sixteen Ford migrated to Detroit to work in its burgeoning machine shops. It was here that he first came into contact with a revolutionary new device called the internal combustion engine. But Ford did not make anything of it or with it right away. Ford was a slow starter; his Model Ts would later become famous for the same quality. Over the years he moved from job to job, tinkering constantly in a little shop near his home. He was well into his thirties by the time he built his first horseless carriage, a buggy frame mounted on bicycle wheels and powered by a deafening four-cylinder engine. Still more years would pass before he set up the Ford Motor Company backed by a paltry $28,000 put up by a group of small investors. Established in 1903, the little company was a success from the start, producing more or less conventional models. But Henry Ford had an idea, and he could not let it idle.

      Popular legend has it that Ford discussed his notion with the famous inventor Thomas Edison. "Young man," Edison is supposed to have said. "This concept will change the world."

      Ford's plan was a simple one: to produce a car that anyone could afford. Up until that time automobiles had been mostly a plaything of the rich. With the right design and production system, Ford was sure he could change that. "I will build a car for the multitude," Ford proclaimed in 1908 when the first Model T sputtered to life in Detroit. Early touring car versions sold for $550, but assembly lines Ford set up became increasingly efficient, and within a few years the price had dropped to under three hundred dollars. This was well within the reach of anyone with a job, and people everywhere were soon sputtering around the countryside in Model Ts.

      The Model T has become an indelible part of American folklore, and practically every family has a story about one. In most such tales the Tin Lizzie is not so much the subject as it is one of the characters, for while they all looked much the same, they each had their own personality.

      For instance: One Texas farmer could only start his Model T if he kicked it — and in just the right place. After he died without revealing the magic spot, his family tried time and again to kick the car to life. But not knowing the magic spot, they could never again get it to start.

      A Connecticut doctor who had never driven a car went into town to pick up his new Model T and drove it back home where his large, extended family waited in the front yard to cheer his arrival. The family shouted and waved, but he drove right by the house without stopping. The good doctor had no idea how to use the brakes and had to keep driving until the car ran out of gas.

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