Ford Model T

Before the Model T, a car was a rich man's toy. Henry Ford's idea was the opposite: a car simple enough, tough enough and cheap enough that an ordinary wage earner could own one. It worked so completely that it reshaped daily life, opening up rural distances and remaking towns around the automobile.

The breakthrough wasn't only the car — it was how it was made. Ford's moving assembly line, introduced in 1913, slashed both the time to build a Model T and its price, which fell to around $850 and kept dropping. More than 15 million were built between 1908 and 1927, on a spindly, 540 kg frame that could be fixed by hand almost anywhere.

No single model since has changed the shape of ordinary life quite as much. The Model T didn't just sell in enormous numbers; it made mass motoring — and mass production itself — the default.