Discover the untold story of the Ford Model T in our latest video. This iconic car not only revolutionized transportation but also had a dark side. Explore its complex legacy of innovation, safety issues, impact on wealth distribution, and even its connection to antisemitism. Join us on a journey through history, where the Model T shaped the world in ways you never imagined.
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Sounds jealous that the Brits didn't do it.
An imperfect car built/designed in an imperfect way by imperfect men in an imperfect time. My isn't hind sight wonderful!!
Perhaps comparing Ford with other car makers or other companies in industry would have been more appropriate here.
The fact is attitudes were very different then to what they are today and injustices would apply to any company in one way or another.
Safety was probably last in priorities back then and that was more accepted even if it was wrong to do so.
The presenter here is either naïve or perhaps wishes to attack Ford for one reason or another. Either way, this video is neither balanced or informative in the way it should be.
Hey Simon: How many people were getting hurt, maimed, killed, and sick from using animals for transportation? 🙄
Wow! I had no idea Simon is a Marxist. This entire video is almost word for word Karl Marx critique on Capitalism. I especially like the part of how it displaced quality artisans/craftsman as if those same artisans were capable of building an automobile.
People still drive them though with modified electric fuel pumps, starters, and better brakes.
This car changed the world for the better giving millions of regular people transport and opportunities they couldn't have dreamt about previously. Motor cars where no longer the preserve of the elite. Perhaps they dislike Henry Ford???
You are so full of bull on this one that you made my avoid at all costs list.
Thank you for not forgetting the harm he did to Jews.
Automotive technology was so primitive back then that it's unfair to point out it's problems without also pointing out that building cars in that era was a learning experience and automotive technology continued to improve with each new model. This vehicle was a major success in helping to raise people out of poverty and raise the lifestyle of the average person. It's a classic example of why capitalism is the best economic system on the planet for innovation and improving quality of life for so many millions of people.
Henry Ford was a man of his time. Antisemitism was rife at the time and to judge him by modern morals is unfair. A lot of companies had the same faults. What drove the other manufacturers was to find a way to gain a foothold in the market. Dodge Brothers pushed their more powerful engines and better braking as well as the styling. Marmon, did too though they were expensive for the Middle Class, they were popular with what we call the upper middle class.
Blaming a revered car on America's problems? Yeah, I just laughed and stopped watching.
I've owned a Model T. Easy to drive, easy to fix, easy to keep running. Built like Industrial equipment.
To be fair to Ford. He could not find enough skilled workers so he hired from everywhere. My entire family moved from Scotland to Michigan, because Ford needed tool and die makers
I have a T in the garage and it is a remarkable piece of technology considering the time period. It is simple in certain ways but very advanced in others. The bearing and piston clearances are close to cars today and it is a precision machine. It isn't that easy to work on either in certain respects but the brakes aren't nearly as dodgy as described. They are only 2 wheel admittedly but the car is light and can stop if you really need it to. The tires are the limiting factor actually as they are more like bicycle tires than car tires. There is little rubber that meets the road!
It is not that easy to drive but probably easier than other cars of the period. I have seldom (not really ever) had mine backfire when cranking it either. Certainly it is more dangerous than a modern car but you are only going 30-35 mph normally. That is 4-5 times faster than you would have gone with a horse but a horse can kick you or throw you if you are riding it so it might be an even trade safety wise.
I think the video is interesting but too negative. Ford's antisemitism was a product of the time, remember the 1920's was the height of the KKK as well. Ford was a simple man of limited education that made a product that changed the world in ways he never imagined or could predict. He isn't responsible for those changes, we are collectively.
That quote about "any colour as long as it is black" is a total myth. In fact there were a few colours available, none of them were black,
Wow, I had no idea that Henry Ford was such a bellend.
Ford was fair to his workers and they made at the time about 3 times what a worker was making in Europe doing the same thing; Sounds like out host might have a touch too much socialism and brit in him to be fair; American Auto Workers are the highest paid and benefited in the world today and yeah thanks to evil Capitalist's like Ford; In Britain today Servants who work for King Charles and the Royal family are normally paid half what other workers in Britain are paid Also at the Time English Auto makers paid next to nothing their labor thanks to a Royal Exemption; Fords workers were well paid for the job and they were insanely loyal to him; The Car Ford made allowed Average Americans even poor Black sharecroppers to own a Car and to move to better places and find better jobs; LOL looking back on Ford like the Host is doing is the worst thing an historian can do putting 21st Century eyes in the heads of early 20th century man; But still a great article and story As always even with a few negatives; Ironic but with out the A and T Europe would still be in horse and buggies;
How about a video regarding the fact that the US is in a current depression that exceeds the Great Depression? Or about how the Big Three shut out Tucker because it would cost them too much to catch up with his designs? Or about how the unskilled assembly line workers would unionize and that their demands would cost the US so much that now the average person cannot afford a new vehicle? I am pissed. Sorry for the rant but I feel it is justified.
Amazing too is the lack of any safety on Aircraft or indeed Trains at the time; Train wrecks were common;
You can find as many negative points with any first. This is nothing more than someone trying to discredit Ford for this one of the several things he brought about that changed history. You can hate him for his possibly being a knot- see, or any thing else he did, but you can't tale away what he did give to the human race. For one, without his assembly lines and a few other inventions he was responsible for, we would have never been able to produce the equipment needed to defeat the bad guys.
This guy is telling tall tales
Model A saved the day…. four on the floor and a fifth in my hand 👌
It could have been any car or any product for that matter; in fact Ford learned about the assembly line from meat packing plants which had already "dehumanized" labor. A $300 car can't be terribly safe, but then they weren't traveling faster than about 20 or 25. Remember that most cars were made out of wood and a little steel. Ford used a superior steel to other cars(Vanadium steel). The Model T made a car affordable for everyone! Was is successful? Well 15 million says it all! Does this mean is was reliable, well not really but no car from its time was, but it was easy to work on and repair out on the road.
Did it solve the Great Horse Manure Crisis?
Henry Ford was very shrewd. I read that he made an arrangement with the company that supplied the batteries for the model T, that the crates in which the batteries were shipped were made of a certain wood and the slats of the crates were cut to a certain length and width and coated with creosote. When the shipment of batteries arrived at the Ford plant, the crates were carefully disassembled and the slats of the crates were collected. The slats were then brought to the assembly line and installed on the frame of the model T as its floorboards. There was little if any cost to Ford.
Henry Ford seemed to be the hero that lived long enough to become the villain. On another note. I highly recommend a book called "The Reckoning" by David Haleberstam. It goes into good detail about the auto industry, focusing on Ford and Nissan. It was published in the 1980s, but it's worth the effort to get IMO.
Wealth inequality 😂. Want wealth? Get a marketable skill and a job
I'd love to see a Henry Ford biopic with Daniel Day-Lewis as Ford.
and set the path for the destructive power of WW2.
Gave the working man his own personal transport.
Very bad idea, eh!
So what’s wrong with wealth inequality? I never understood how that is an argument…
The five dollar day was pretty amazing.
Recommended reading: “The Flivver King” by Upton Sinclair.
Henry Ford I has been dead for 76 years, yet we still want to judge the company and products over his beliefs? Gee why don't we discuss how Volkswagen AG was founded as a Nazi propaganda tool offering the German working class the ability to have a car, like the Americans had with the Model T? Oh wait the Model T instilled in the working class that they could have a car, and Hitler used that to establish him self in power so it's only natural to assume that Henry Ford and the Model T established unreasonable expectations that gave Hitler credibility when h promised Chickens in pots, housing, cars ….so Henry Ford and the model T are responsible for Hitler and WWII right? Yes the Ford Model T was crude, falls far short of any thing resembling safety standards but so did it's contemporaries. You can criticize Ford for not updating the Model T with improved features while in production but then no one was forced to buy a Model T. If they had the means they could buy a Chevrolet, Maxwell, Willys or any other popular pried car. The reality was that buy the time Ford stopped making the Model T Ford's prestige and position as the largest automobile manufacturer had passed. The companies profits had slid, Model Ts were not selling and Ford didn't have the adequate corporate knowledge for new product development, what little they had was in the Lincoln division. Ford again was pushed to the brink of failure, by Henry Ford I, in the 1940's. It was only by the ouster of Henry Ford I in a coup lead by Henry Ford II did Ford have any chance. Frankly had a few internal decisions been made differently or some decisions by competitors been different Ford wouldn't be here today. The legacy of Henry Ford I also includes near destruction of the company he built and some important lessons to be learned in corporate leadership, mostly negative examples but still examples.
Overt propaganda and revisionism is gross.
Be more subtle next time
Haters are gonna Hate !
Those who Can, Do. Those that can;t teach. And Bitch & Complain.
Conclusions spoken like a truly-typical elitist snob who continuously second guesses the actions and motivations of historical figures and events.
It’s intriguing almost every invention to improve personal safety whether car, train, plane, or ship was only after deaths and injuries. Great engineering, but not too much foresight.
Worth pointing out that the thinking at the time of the Early Model A was that coaches and carriagemakers were going to pioneer the age of the automobile or motor car… Thus the original "horseless carriage" moniker dubiously coined… AND carriagemakers WERE somewhat self-indulgent craftsmen who fancied their works as much art as any science or technical skill… AND THAT was the revolutionary idea of the Ford Factory and precision made parts in mass production. Nobody among the car makers (sometimes referred to as Cartels) liked the idea of semi-skilled and unskilled laborers getting hired in mass to turn a few bolts or master the shaving of spokes for round wheels. They fought hard to BURY Ford and his revolution in red-tape, court costs, and anything else they could throw in his way.
Nothing to excuse the inexcusable side of Ford on the matter, either. Exploitation of immigrants who didn't speak well enough to learn their rights and kept in fear of law enforcement saw just about EVERY industry in some fashion. SO there's enough apologists and whitewash to go around…
Cars and internal combustion DID usher the horse and mule to obsolescence, and spurred on the cleaner streets as the days of cowboys and range riders gave way to a cocktail of pollution that arguably holds as much or more public health risks as the feces and urine that rendered the reality of the horse drawn buggy days to more of a source of nightmare fuel than the romanticized ideals we see in Hollywood or on TV in all but the Comedies where sh*t and p*ss are still fodder for a few cheap laughs.
AND proving that a reasonably priced car COULD be made and brought to the public and that there WOULD be a market for it was a blow to the stranglehold the older Cartels would have to succumb to inevitably. While it arguably made SOME older era artisans and craftsmen obsolete, it only really chased MOST of them out of the automobile market. Pricey and flashy cars would still be sought after as status symbols by those with such interests and even today, one can make the choice whether a "Super Car" is one that can break past the 250 mph "wall" or if it's a more refined machine from a more refined manufacturer, complete with wet bar and services to keep said bar stocked at the "owners" standard for a periodical subscription fee of course… Bentleys haven't disappeared entirely, and people KNOW about buying the likes of a Rolls Royce, though the company sells more engines for airliners than they sell cars from one year to the next. Ferrari, and Porsche and RUF are similarly known brands while Mazaratti and a few others might only be casually discussed between video game fanatics or the rich and crusty enough to even WANT to drop several million dollars equivalent on a single road-worthy vehicle. You can even order a Morgan with it's requisite wooden frame, but the list is apparently a lengthy wait time, and they're still considered production cars, even if their sales numbers utterly shrivel up in comparison to Toyota or Chevrolet.
Like anyone else who looked to the world and society and saw reason to shake it up with industry, there's plenty of both good and bad we can say about Henry Ford. Like the rest of the humans, he's a more complicated thing than just a wild engineer who tried "the cowboy way" and won the bet on the long game. ;o)
I totally agree with you, dude. America sucks! That's why nobody wants to come here!
Wealth inequality. Sigh. Study Pareto distributions. In all human endeavors- all- be it writing essays, baking cookies, making money- select few will be those with the most money or most essays ad nauseum. It is the reality of the human condition.
It was a very good car dummy.
17:32 + "from 1917 until 1979 the Model T's heyday, ' wasn't the 90% of Americans actually endured a steady loss of wealth, overall, compared in the following decades." etc. etc. and more nonsensical rubbish.
It all sounds very American to me. Ford was a great proponent of the Nazi Party, and received awards from them. There are photographs of this available on Google. (See 18:33)
My parents were involved in the Model T club , we had 1916 Model T touring, it was the last year of the brass" T" , the radiator that is.
I hope you read all the comments because I believe more of your content was negative and more of it should have been positive. I’ve enjoyed your pieces on YouTube but now not so much.
What a rant… unworthy of you, Simon. Henry Ford was clearly to blame for all the ills of early 20th century industry, with repercussions to this day – factory workers being forced into inhumane conditions to produce a deathtrap automobile that only served to increase social inequity, while crushing the previous craftsmen who had labored so diligently to produce singularly amazing automobiles at a fraction of Ford's pace. Social controls, patriarchal workplace restrictions – you forgot to toss in that Henry Ford was also a confirmed anti-Semite with articles to his credit to prove it. Blah, blah, blah… But yet the Model T was indeed a revolution in human mobility, and the industrial woes you cite were common to all early 20th century industry (my grandmother was still a child when she worked in a Southern textile mill for a miserable weekly wage in that same era, with no labor protections in place). My 1964 Volkswagen – surely a product of the "modern" era – had the fuse box bolted to the thin-walled 10-gallon gas tank that sat right above the driver's knees, behind two thin sheets of metal. A veritable death trap, indeed! It seems to me that you need to stop flogging Henry Ford's invention and perhaps focus on all of America's early industrialization of a "megaproject" with both positive and negative effects. It was what it was – progress as best we could manage it, more than a century ago. The Model T was genius in its time – and apparently now anathema to ours, with our superior wisdom. Simon, you've done better work than this. A little less doctrine, please, and a little more intellectual effort.
Not to mention the number of fords built in Germany pre-WW2 and for the Nazi war machine clear up until the US joined the war.(not model T's however).There is much not mentioned about the early days of Ford MoCo and the man himself and other car makers as well but hey it's 20 minutes people. As far as safety all cars were a danger because just geting gas was as dangerous as driving(also for the attendant) and no one knew how to drive and didn't train or learn properly.Roads were crap or non-existent. Brakes were way inadequate and the issues go on and on…
There are MANY very well made points in the comments I will say # 1759
And thus America was locked into car dependency.