Stories about cars from the USA and Canada
Henry Ford did not build the first American car. That honour fell to Charles and Frank Duryea who built a single-cylinder, four-horsepower vehicle that they first demonstrated on 21st September 1893 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Ford didn’t invent mass production either; the ancient Chinese mass-produced bronze parts for crossbows during the Warring States Period of 475 to 221 BC, and the ancient Carthaginians built warships in bulk to bolster their naval forces at moderate cost.
What he did do was to use mass-production, he called it Fordism, to reduce production costs and make automobiles more accessible to the general public.
His Model T appeared in 1908, but that wasn’t his first car; simply the first built on an assembly line. He had already produced three Quadricycles, or Horseless Carriages, between 1896 and 1901. These were followed by the original Model A between 1903 and 1904.
The Model A you’re probably thinking about (left) was built on assembly lines between 1927 and 1931. We have a story about one of them below.
He was awarded a patent for an automobile transmission system in 1911, helped to pioneer the five-day work week and, despite his vehicles being co-opted into WWl, was a pacifist. Further, although he is rumoured to have said, “You can have your car in any colour you like as long as it’s black,” there is no actual proof that he ever did. Black paint was simply the cheapest available and the single colour kept assembly lines running uninterrupted. Black could also cover a multitude of flaws if necessary.
Many years later Phillips Carbon ran a campaign that stated, tongue-in-cheek, “When Henry Ford said you could have any colour you liked as long as it was black, we immediately developed 293 shades of black.” The number looks impossibly high but one cannot deny blue-black, red-black, brown-black, yellow-black, green-black, purple-black, grey-black, bronze-black, golden-black, slate, charcoal, obsidian…
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Appropriately, our first story on this page is about one man’s lifelong adventure with a 1930 Ford Model A: https://oldcars.net.za/blog/2025/01/17/1930-ford-model-a-sport-coupe/
Next up is a Rhodesian interpretation of a 1931 Dodge pickup: https://oldcars.net.za/blog/2025/02/27/1931-dodge-hunting-van/
1929 Peerless Model 6-81 Sedan: https://oldcars.net.za/blog/2025/10/22/1929-peerless-model-6-81-sedan/
1933 Peerless V16 prototype: https://oldcars.net.za/blog/2025/12/03/1933-peerless-v16/
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