The Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie and the Flivver) was an automobile produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from 1908 through 1928. The first Model T was built on September 24, 1908. It is a vintage car, rather than a classic car.
There were several cars produced or prototyped by Henry Ford from the foundation of the company in 1903 until the Model T came along. Although he started at the Model A, there weren't 19 production models; some were only prototypes.The production model immediately before the Model T was the Model S, an upgraded version of the company's largest success to that point, the Model N. For some reason, the follow-on was the Model A and not the Model U.
The Model T was the first automobile mass produced on assembly lines with completely interchangeable parts, marketed to the middle class. To speed assembly, between 1915 and 1925 it was only available in one color, black, as black paint dried the fastest; Henry Ford is reputed to have made the statement "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." Model Ts in different colors were produced from 1908 to 1914, and then again from 1926 to 1927.
By 1914, the assembly process for the Model T had been so streamlined it took only 93 minutes to assemble a car; that year, Ford produced more cars than all other automakers combined. The Model T was a great commercial success, and for years in the late 1910s and early 1920s, it was estimated that more that half of all motorcars in existence in the world were Model T Fords. In fact, it was so successful that Ford did not purchase any advertising between 1917 and 1923; in total, more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured, more than any other model of automobile, with the exception of the Volkswagen Beetle.
In May 1927, Ford Motor Company ceased manufacturing Model Ts. Nevertheless, many Model T parts are still manufactured until today, particularly fibreglass replicas of their distinctive bodies, which are popular for hot rods (as immortalized in the Jan and Dean surf music song, "Bucket T", which was later recorded by The Who).