Model T.

In 1908, when Henry Ford was forty-five years old and the president of the Ford Motor Company, he had an idea that must have made both his associates and competitors think he had taken leave of his senses. The Ford organization, following conventional wisdom, had been manufacturing the Ford Model N, a large, popular car. Auto producers generally believed that the car demanded by the public would be large and expensive, since by definition the auto attracted only those in the upper-income groups and would never be produced for the average man who could not afford it. But now Henry Ford wanted to manufacture a small car to sell to a mass market at a low price —less than $1,000 —an invitation to bankruptcy, the industry thought. Before the Model T went out of production, nearly twenty years later, the lowest-priced model was...