The year is 1903 …
And a Chicago dentist by the name of Ernest Pfennig is about to make history by becoming the first owner of a Ford Model A car on July 23. The price? $850.
In 1903, the great Henry Ford, with a $28,000 investment (around $1 million today), launched the Ford Motor Company in a modest, wooden, converted factory in Detroit, Michigan. He was 39 years old when he started the company, which has since become one of the world’s largest and most profitable companies. His first car was the Model A, followed by the Model B, Model C, and eventually the Model T, an iconic automobile generally regarded as the first to be widely affordable for the average middle-class American. Incredibly, at the time of the Model A’s first purchase by Pfenning, the Ford’s company had burned through nearly all of their initial investment funds. They only had a meager $223.65 left in their bank account. But the profit from these first sales allowed Ford to continue building his automobile empire.
Like so many cars of this pioneering era, the Model A had its fair share of problems, which included slipping transmission bands and overheating. Of course, Ford advertised it as the most reliable machine ever built. The car weighed 1,240 pounds; reached a max speed of 28 mph; had a 72-inch wheelbase; and sold at a base price of $750. Later Ford models, such as the Model T, were much more reliable and could be fixed by owners. These were also much cheaper because Ford perfected the science of assembly-line production, a far more efficient way to build than handcrafting each car, one by one.
Ford said of the Model T:
I will build a motor 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.
Cars would forever change American life, so much so that it is sometimes hard to wrap our heads around it, considering that we all take cars for granted in 2026. Cars changed the way Americans lived. It changed the economy. It changed businesses. It changed our cities. It changed how cities were built and designed. It certainly changed Detroit and the entire state of Michigan. It changed warfare. Infrastructure. Bridges. The interstate highway system. It even changed the way we think of ourselves as Americans. The car now forever symbolizes our freedom and our love for, as Ford put it, “God’s great open spaces.” It symbolizes our plucky nature and self-reliance.
New ways to create start with new ways to solve problems. Joe Bacus and Leef Armontrout, founders of BLA Studios in St. Louis, are doing both with Claude—from welding machinery, to a steel-saving program, to community improvements.
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