Tin Lizzy is a photograph by Edward Fielding which was uploaded on January 14th, 2013.
Tin Lizzy
Old Model T Ford Car with vintage finish. Photography by Edward M. Fielding www.edwardfielding.com... more
Title
Tin Lizzy
Artist
Edward Fielding
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Old Model T Ford Car with vintage finish. Photography by Edward M. Fielding www.edwardfielding.com
.....
Found along side during travels in the back roads of Vermont.
.....
The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie, T‑Model Ford, 'Model T Ford', or T) is an automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from September 1908 to October 1927.[1] It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common middle-class American; some of this was because of Ford's innovations, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.[2] The Ford Model T was named the world's most influential car of the 20th century in an international poll.
The Model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile became popular. The first production Model T was produced on August 12, 1908[4] and left the factory on September 27, 1908, at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan. On May 26, 1927, Henry Ford watched the 15 millionth Model T Ford roll off the assembly line at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan.
There were several cars produced or prototyped by Henry Ford from the founding of the company in 1903 until the Model T came along. Although he started with the Model A, there were not 19 production models (A through T); some were only prototypes. The production model immediately before the Model T was the Model S,[6] an upgraded version of the company's largest success to that point, the Model N. The follow-up was the Ford Model A (rather than any Model U). Company publicity said this was because the new car was such a departure from the old that Henry wanted to start all over again with the letter A.
The Model T was the first automobile mass produced on moving assembly lines with completely interchangeable parts, marketed to the middle class.[citation needed] Henry Ford said of the vehicle:
"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one � and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
.....
....
Close up of the headlight and grill of a classic vintage automobile.
.....
One summer back the 60's, when I was 15 and my kid brother was 12, my parents left us at home while they worked in the factory in town. We were expected to gather the eggs, feed the pigs and other chores but then we were free for our adventures.
There was an old lady that lived a few miles from the farm that we used to bike over to check out when we got bored. Now this old lady's house was not that much different than a junkyard. She had lived through the Depression and never threw anything out. You never know when you might need something or need to cash in some scrap to make a mortgage payment.
Now a days they might have called her a "hoarder" but the hoarding was more practical then mental. Stuff was made out of real things back then - wood, rubber, metal - not like all of the cheap Chinese made Walmart crap like today.
.....
She had stuff piled up all over the place, in the house, in the out buildings and the barn. Everything was packed full with 80 plus years of collected stuff.
My brother and I used to look through the stuff and if something caught our eye we'd bargain with the old lady for it.
.....
One day in the back in her woods all covered with weeds sat a 1938 Ford 2 door sedan. The rear was up on blocks, with the differential hanging loose from the springs. The car was complete, although it certainly hadn't run in years and was covered with grime and vines.
The window glass was pretty much "fogged" and you could hardly see from any window. I tried to buy it, but she wouldn't sell. I kept after her and finally she agreed to sell it to me for $20.00, ONLY if she could keep the back seat for "sentimental reasons". Her words, not mine. The woman was 80 years old, I didn't ask what those reasons were. I paid her the $20.00, bolted up the rear end and my brother and I pulled it home with our Ford tractor. We put in an old battery and some gas, pulled it about 10 yards with the tractor and lo and behold it actually started!
.....
I have never seen anything smoke so much! The mechanical brakes didn't work, so when it started, I ran into the back of the tractor. I drove that thing down the road at 62 mph. That's all it would do. No brakes, barely able to see out of the windshield, and tubes sticking out of the cracked tires! In later years, after that lady had died, my brother and I went back to her place. It had been pretty much picked over by that time, but there, under a tree, right where we left it, were the remains of that back seat. I never did find out why it met so much to the old woman that she wouldn't part with it.
Uploaded
January 14th, 2013