"Smitty Two" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Kyle Boatright" wrote:

snip

The Model T sold because Henry Ford made it affordable, and sold it. No
one was driving around in a horse and buggy saying, "jeez, I sure wish
someone would invent a car." The T wasn't exactly a Toyota Avalon,
either. You actually had to get dirty and maintain and fix the damn
thing on a regular basis. The roads sucked. The whole automobile
infrastructure hadn't been built. There weren't a bunch of gas stations,
and Sears stores weren't selling tires and Die Hards. I'd say the T was
more of a novelty toy than "practical transportation" when it was
introduced.

Still he sold a half million $400 cars per year at a time when his
laborers were earning $2.50/day, and the US population was only
100,000,000.


The model T sold because it was a better solution than the horse and buggy.
Have you ver worked around horses? They are fragile animals that take a lot
of maintenance and upkeep. You have to feed, water, shoe, and clean up after
them even if you're not going to need them for days, weeks, or months at a
time. You can park a Model T for months at a time, and it will be ready to
go as long as there is fuel in the tank. On the time spent vs
transportation value realized, the -T was a huge improvement over beasts of
burden.

The market for basic transportation is fixed - EVERYONE needs it. Henry Ford
had that in his favor. LSA manufacturers don't, because LSA's are toys
(more or less), not transportation.

KB