Ford Motor Co. is going back to the future from the driver’s seat of a 1914 Model T touring car.
In 1999, when there was talk in Detroit that Ford would catch General Motors Corp. in annual U.S. car sales for the first time since 1930, the Dearborn-based automaker gave the green light to a project to build six 1914 Model T’s from scratch.
“It was really neat because Ford employees who didn’t have a sense of their company’s own history really got into not only this project, but they also got into the company history,” said Guy Zaninovich, project engineer for T-100, the internal name in honor of the carmaker’s centennial next year.
The cars were assembled in a specialty vehicles garage at the Ford Advanced Manufacturing Technology factory and lab in Detroit because it took some of Ford’s most advanced manufacturing techniques to bring the half-dozen cars to life.
“In the build process, even though the parts were made all over Ford, they were all assembled in the space out here in this shop,” said Zaninovich, who built them with Bill Leland, an advanced transmission engineer in Ford’s manufacturing operations. “Employees, as they were making the parts, stopped by to check on the progress. On a lot of projects, you can make a part and never even know if it was used on the final product. Here, they could come and check the progress and see how it was doing.
“Most everyone who worked on the project also got rides in the vehicles.”
The T-100 project was undertaken in conjunction with the automaker’s new exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village complex in Dearborn called “The Henry Ford Story.”
The cars were commissioned so museum visitors could have a ride in something more reliable than an 88-year-old vehicle, which would be prone to breakdowns even if impeccably maintained.
Four of the six clone cars, which are accurate right down with the throttle and crank starter, will go to Greenfield Village. The two others are bound for a museum or entity to be named later–possibly the Henry Ford Estate in Dearborn and the Edsel Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich.
Though the Model T debuted in October 1908 as a 1909 model and lasted through 1927, Ford chose 1914 for automotive and historical reasons.
“The Model T essentially launched the company, which made the decision to reproduce the 1914 Model T simple,” said John Rintamaki, group vice president and chief of staff at Ford, when it presented the cars to the museum in September. “The 1914 T was the first vehicle built on Ford’s revolutionary moving assembly line and the first year of the $5 a workday wage.”
Despite their historical accuracy, “all of the parts in these vehicles are new,” said Leland, T-100 project manager. “The company worked with dozens of craftsmen and suppliers to make the parts.”
The Ford team basically had to “reverse-engineer” the cars, taking a car apart piece by piece to figure out the techniques used to assemble it. (The Big Three have done that with each other’s cars for years.)
For T-100, the build team worked from grainy and fading blueprints that had been transferred to 70-mm microfiche more than a half-century ago.
What they couldn’t read from the original blueprints and parts specs, they had to eyeball from a 1914 “study car” Ford bought to support this project.
“Certain things like the engine block, there is no parts drawing,” said project engineer Zaninovich. “Well, there’s a drawing, but it just shows exterior dimensions.
“So what we did with the engine block was to take an original 1914 block and send it out to Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah, where they did [an industrial] CAT scan on it. They sliced the block into 1-mm sections, horizontally and vertically, and from there you can get all of the internal and external data.
“Then, from the CAT scan data, we were able to make a 3-D computer model and from that model, we were able to design the cores and patterns. And from the cores and patterns, you can cast the block, then go back to the 3-D computer model and use that data to do the machining.”
Older, handcraft manufacturing techniques also were used.
“The tires are currently being [commercially] reproduced,” Zaninovich said. “There are still about 250,000 original Model T’s on the road [out of 15 million produced], so there’s a large market for aftermarket parts out there. So we bought the tires from the same people that supply the antique car hobbyists.
“The machine center-hub of the wheel was made at Ford Transmission in Livonia [Mich.] out of solid [raw materials], and the rims of the wheels were made by a guy in Cadillac, Mich., who reproduces rims for antique cars.
“And the wood spokes were made by an Amish guy in Pennsylvania who makes wooden wheels for buggies, automobiles and firetrucks.”
It took 11 months to build the first one, the same amount of time it took to design and build the Model T in 1980, and two to three months each to finish the remaining five. All six cars are classified as prototypes so they’re not subject to federal regulations requiring seat belts, air bags and the like. Ford won’t say how much the project cost.
The only concession to the present was to make all six vehicles use a catalytic converter to reduce exhaust emissions. But it fits in the original muffler shell.
Zaninovich says he’s had the clone Model T’s on Detroit’s highways and service roads at sustained speeds of 50 to 55 m.p.h., about the same as the originals, according to Zaninovich.
“We’ve driven them all over the place. The first car, before we gave it to Greenfield Village, we probably put about 1,500 miles on it. The fifth car probably has 200 to 300 miles on it, and the second and third cars have maybe 500 to 700 miles apiece on them,” Zaninovich says. “They drive just like an original Model T. They start, stop and steer just like an original car. They even smell like an old Model T. The only difference is that they don’t have 88 years of wear. So when you hit a speed bump you don’t hear a bunch of creaking that you always hear on an old Model T because it’s understandably loose and worn in places.”
Send in the clones
Here are the specifications of the six 1914 Ford Model T Replica Touring Cars:
– Classification: Prototypes
– Engine: 176.7-c.i. 4-cylinder
– Horsepower: 22.5
– Redline: 1,600 r.p.m.
– Compression ratio: 4:0:1
– Transmission: Two-speed manual
– Top speed: 55 m.p.h.
– Length: 148 inches
– Wheelbase: 100 inches
– Height: 89 inches
– Weight: 1,200 pounds
– Tires: 30-inch diameter
– Brakes: Rear only–footbrake to transmission, handbrake to rear wheels.
– Modern update: Catalytic converter
– Assembled at: Ford Advanced Manufacturing Technology factory and laboratory, Detroit
Source: Ford Motor Co. Centennial Operations
Carmaker’s history woven into town
Population shrank after plant moved
HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. — Stand at the intersection of Woodward and Manchester Avenues in Detroit’s industrial center, and it looks like every other urban enclave in America–strip malls, fast-food joints, convenience stores and gas stations.
But less than a century ago, downtown Highland Park was the crossroads of the industrialized world, where thousands of immigrants came for Henry Ford’s $5-a-day labor rate.
Today, the Model T Plaza mall has supplanted half the original Ford Model T factory, where 20th Century mass production was developed and from which Henry Ford put the world on wheels.
A Michigan Historical Marker etched onto the outside of a bustling Farmer Jack supermarket on the site tells the tale:
“The Ford Motor Co. Highland Park was built between 1909 and 1920 on the lot bounded by Woodward, Manchester and Oakland Avenues, and three railroad tracks.
“An office building, a garage and several machine shops once stood on this portion of the site. At this plant, Henry Ford instituted the $5 workday, a generous wage for its time. In Factory H, located directly east of here, he began mass-producing automobiles on moving assembly lines.
“Detroit architect Albert Kahn designed the complex, which included offices, factories, a power plant and a foundry. In 1927, Ford shifted auto production to the River Rouge plant in Dearborn, limiting Highland Park to truck and tractor manufacturing.
“The Ford Highland Park plant was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997.”
Katherine Clarkson, executive director of the non-profit urban renewal group Preservation Wayne, representing Detroit-Wayne County, grew up in Highland Park. She said population grew from 400 in 1900 to 46,000 in 1920, when the $5 workday became a $6 workday. But it declined with the shift of production to Dearborn; today, about 16,000 people live there.
“Everybody knows that immigrants came from all over the world for that famous $5 workday,” Clarkson explained. “But this also meant that at its early peak in 1914, some 54 different languages and dialects were spoken inside of the plant and the workers published 12 foreign culture newspapers that were printed and distributed to the various ethnic groups that made up the plant’s population.
“Henry Ford had to hire English teachers from the local high school to come to the plant and teach English language lessons to his employees during their lunch hour, all so the Italian workers could communicate with the Polish, Persian or Greek workers.”
Clarkson also notes that during a sewer renovation a few years ago, workers found a small local underground rail line that ran between the Model T plant and a former Manufacturers Bank branch. The bank ran a small “coal car” full of cash daily between its vault and the Ford Model T’s paymaster department.
“Henry Ford was famous for his distrust of banks and bankers, so he stubbornly paid his employees in cash well into the 1940s,” Clarkson said.
Tractor production ceased at Highland Park by the 1970s, so Ford sold the site to a private group on a land contract, then leased back the surviving factory-warehouse space for storage. “I’ve been through Highland Park several times and it’s really neat because if you look at the books, all the plant locations were identified by numbers on metal columns,” said Ford vehicle engineer, historian and Model T car expert Guy Zaninovich. “You can walk around with your history book and some of the columns still have the original paint, so you can cross-reference to your book and see that `H-1, that’s where the transmissions were assembled.’
“You’ve got to remember that by 1920-21, over 70 percent of all the cars in the entire world were Model T’s. Our modern world, our motorized society, all began at the Ford Model T plant in Highland Park.”
–Gerald Scott
