Model T turns 100; it was truly an engine of change

DEARBORN, Mich. -- Industry experts believe that by the next century, cars may no longer run on fossil fuels. We may have tiny personal mobility vehicles powered by the sun and air. Cars might drive themselves, letting commuters sit back and read the paper. Crashes may seem a relic of a barbaric past.

"We don't even know who our competitors will be," says Larry Burns, General Motors' vice president of research and development.

Saturday marked the 100th anniversary of the Model T, the first simple, inexpensive car to be mass-produced and marketed to the masses. Within a few years, half the vehicles on the road were Model T's.

Just as it's a struggle today to guess what the industry will be like in 2108, it would've been nearly impossible in 1908 to predict how the Model T would change the world.

On Saturday, 50 Model T's paraded from Ford's headquarters here to the Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit where the cars were first assembled, marking the end of a year-long celebration of the Model T and its storied past.

When the Model T first hit America's roads, cities were choked with people and horses, and the top public health nuisances were horse manure and urine and flies. One New York forecaster warned that by 1930, manure would reach the third story of Manhattan's buildings.

The Model T, and cars to follow, became the unlikely solution, causing an explosion in the number of automobiles. The 79,000 vehicles in 1905 had grown to 244.2 million in 2006 and also led to air pollution, a vast network of paved roads and the birth and growth of suburbs.

But even now, only 13% of the world's population owns a car. Global development is expected to change that rapidly, with the world market increasing from 70 million cars and trucks a year to 100 million within years.

Energy will be a leading concern as more drivers use oil and gas reserves more quickly. Donald Hillebrand, director of transportation research at Argonne National Laboratory, says the world consumes about 1 cubic mile of oil a year and there's an estimated 45 cubic miles left.

Industry and governments need to find solutions that can be easily integrated into the current energy infrastructure, he says. There may be more opportunities for light rail in cities, and traffic flow could be eased by having cars talk to each other.

At least in the near future, electricity seems to be the answer for powering cars. Cars will use lithium batteries charged by household plugs and onboard generators. Engineers will continue work on alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen and natural gas. "High fuel prices are really opening up these ideas for us to look at again," Hillebrand says.

Electric cars that charge with a plug and can be driven as far in a day as petroleum-fueled cars are a ways off. Chrysler and GM plan to have advanced electrics on the road in 2010, but those may be plug-in hybrids with a gasoline engine to help power the car and recharge batteries or all-electric cars with a gas-powered generator to recharge batteries when the plug-in charge is spent.

Such electric cars fit the current infrastructure because no new pipelines or fueling stations are needed, and they can be plugged in at night, when power plants have unused capacity.

The buzz around electric cars is growing, says Chris Payne, director of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

"This is a time for public education on electric cars, to build pent-up demand," Payne says, "so when the cars hit the market, they can really take off."

How to drive a Model T: It's harder than you think

Step one in learning to drive a Model T: Forget everything you think you know about driving and listen.

That pedal in the middle? That doesn't stop the car, it puts it in reverse. Those levers on the steering column? Mess them up and you could ruin the car, or lose a finger. Oh, one is the accelerator.

At The Henry Ford, a museum and group of restored buildings across the street from Ford Motor's research and development campus, drivers take visitors for jaunts in Model T's on the narrow roads, showing off historical houses and shops Henry Ford collected with wealth made selling his car for the masses.

It took Linda Trygg, a Model T driver for four years, three one-hour lessons and nearly three weeks of practice to really get comfortable in the Model T. "I love it now," says Trygg.

She starts the car with the hand crank, making sure her thumb is tucked out of the way in case it kicks back, which could break an arm. The motor was balky, so she popped inside and used the electric starter, an invention added to T's in 1919.

The car is loud. And hot. It shudders when taken from low gear into high. Top speed is about 35 mph, a great leap into the future when the Model T first rolled out in 1908. By horse, the 11-mile trip from Dearborn to Detroit took about four hours. Still, early T divers had to plan trips to return home before dark. The acetylene headlamps did little to illuminate the road.

Trygg's 1914 Model T, like all from 1914 to 1925, is black. Though Ford reputedly said Model T buyers could have any color, as long as it was black, the vehicles came in red, green and navy until then. But the colors were so dark, they could seem black.

TELL US: Have you ever driven a Model T? What's it like to drive one?