Late great engineers: Henry Ford

It may be the most memorable quotation to come out of automobile manufacturing. In his 1922 memoir entitled My Life and Work, Henry Ford set out his approach to production: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” And although this has entered the mythology of the industrialised 20th century as an early example of tyranny over consumer choice, it was in fact more a case of Ford’s pragmatism. Black paint dried quicker than other colours, allowing his cars to roll off the production lines at such a rate that by 1918 more than half of America’s automobiles were Model Ts.

When production stopped in 1927 there were more than 15 million of them on the road. It is the eighth highest selling car of all time, while the Ford brand remains the fifth largest (by unit production) manufacturer on the planet. In 1999 the ‘Tin Lizzie’ became the official Global Automotive Elections Foundation ‘car of the century’, beating other finalists in the form of the Mini, Citroën DS, Volkswagen Beetle and Porsche 911. There are still 50,000 roadworthy Model Ts in existence.