A car that changed America
Ford celebrates 100th birthday of Model T
RICHMOND, Ind. -
But a weeklong celebration of the Model T promises to offer some nostalgic balm.
About 750 of the iconic vehicles were on display yesterday in what is being called the largest gathering of Model Ts since they left the factory.
The gathering transformed the Wayne County Fairgrounds into what looked like a movie set for a motion picture depicting life in the early 1900s. Drivers created Model T traffic jams as they picked their way among barns, giving a friendly "AH-OO-GAH" honk of their horns.
Geff Bland, 42, drove his 1915 Model T to the celebration from his home in Springfield, Mo. It took him three days.
"We lived in a rural town where I could drive the car and nobody said anything," said Bland, who began driving his father's Model T in Mississippi when he was 12. "I used to take it out on the gravel roads. I could hear the engine echo off the pine trees at night, and I liked that."
Roger Peterson, 71, of Greeneville, Tenn., has owned 11 Model Ts over the years. He bought his first - a 1923 speedster - when he lived in Marshfield, Mass.
"You don't own just one Model T," Peterson said. "You buy another one and another one and another one."
John Heitmann, a history professor at the University of Dayton who has taught classes on automobile history and its impact on American life, said the Model T is one of the most significant cars of the 20th century and maybe the single most important American car.
The Model T, nicknamed the Tin Lizzie, was probably the most important vehicle in causing social change in America, Heitmann said. It helped transform the nation's cities, enabling residents to move farther away from trolley lines and creating the first ring of suburbs, he said.
Heitmann said the Model T also was embraced by rural Americans. "It was easy to repair. It was so inexpensive that isolation on the American farm came to an end," he said.
