Ford's iconic Model T was built for the common man and began to transform the American landscape soon after it first rolled out of a Detroit factory 100 years ago this week.
It wasn't the first car aimed at the masses, but it was the first to succeed in getting average Americans to look past horses and trolleys to the freedom of the open road.
The Model T changed more than just the layout of American cities, as more mobile workers moved out of crowded tenements into spacious suburban homes.
Henry Ford's moving assembly line revolutionised manufacturing and his decision to double the wages of factory workers set a new standard that helped swell the ranks of the middle class.
It all started with a lightweight frame and a flexible suspension system which allowed the Model T to offer more power for less money and a smoother ride on the country's rut-filled dirt roads.
"The Model T moved the car from being a toy to being a useful tool," said Robert Casey, curator of transportation at The Henry Ford Museum.
"Another car could have done it if somebody else had come along with the idea of a car that was not only inexpensive but had the capabilities the Model T had," said Casey, who authored a book on the history of the Model T.
"Ford was just the first guy to put it all together."
Expensive, hard to drive, and unreliable, the early automobiles were essentially the playthings of the rich.
The Model T's low price and easy handling made it an instant winner when it hit the market on October 1, 1908. Ford temporarily halted sales in May of 1909 because every vehicle scheduled for production through July had been sold.
But Henry Ford was not satisfied: he was obsessed with finding ways to cut costs and improve productivity.
The first Model T sold for $US825 ($A990). By 1925, it cost only $US260 ($A310).
Ford managed this by streamlining his assembly process, using fully interchangeable parts, efficiently handling materials and building his parts in-house.
By 1913 he had implemented a moving assembly line at his hulking factory in Highland Park, Michigan that cut the time it took to build a single chassis from 14 hours to just 1.5 hours.
While this groundbreaking technique allowed Ford to rapidly expand production, it presented him with a major turnover problem.
The assembly line was exhausting and repetitive work that turned people into machines. Workers quit so often that Ford had to hire 963 men in 1913 in order to expand the workforce by 100, Casey wrote in The Model T.
"What they finally found worked was just pay people a whole lot more and make this new kind of work which was relentless and tiring rewarding in another way," Casey said in a telephone interview.
In January 1914 Ford found a solution: he more than doubled the wages of plant employee, offering them a five-dollar, eight-hour day.
"The other auto makers realised they'd have to adopt some of these methods," Casey said. "They also had to adopt Ford's pay scales."
Wages soon rose at plants across the country and Ford was able to create a new market for his automobile as unskilled labourers finally earned enough to buy them.
Ford further expanded his customer base by establishing factories in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and by 1921 the Model T accounted for almost 57 per cent of the world's automobile production.
"It maintained its dominance because it was always the cheapest car and there's a certain momentum after a while: everybody owns a Ford so why would you own another car," Casey said.
The Model T was eventually replaced with the Model A in 1927 after more than 15 million had been sold. It held onto the title of best-selling car until 1972 when it was supplanted by the Volkswagen Bug.
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