There’s more to Model T No. 15 million than meets the eye.
Ford Motor Co. celebrated its production with a ceremony on the last day of production in 1927 at its sprawling plant in Highland Park just north of Detroit. But when was it really built?
Everybody who was anybody was there to celebrate the car — at one point in its 19-year production run, more than half the cars in the world were Model T’s.
There’s just one catch, Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, told me.
“Many folks probably make the logical assumption that a vehicle identification number (VIN) simply gets stamped onto a vehicle as it nears the end of the production line, but two of our vehicles show that it’s a little more complicated than that.”
Managing history
By the 1920s, Ford Motor knew the value of a photo op. What could be better than gathering Henry Ford, his 33-year-old son Edsel and the automaker’s longest-serving employees — who had helped create the Model T — to see the historic car roll off the line before the Model T rolled off into history in favor of the new Model A?
Ford was determined to memorialize the final and 15-millionth Model T, a number no one could have imagined before the so-called Tin Lizzy revolutionized automaking.
Just one problem: No one could predict exactly when car No. 15 million would be built, but it would be a few days before production was scheduled to end May 26, 1927.
“Production managers could estimate when the actual car would get built, but Henry Ford, Edsel Ford, and other officials had busy schedules and obviously couldn’t stand around waiting for the fateful day,” Anderson told me.
How could Ford ensure all the dignitaries were present for the photographers ready to capture history as it happened?
Model T creators were all there
There were no rules governing vehicle identification numbers back then. Every automaker had its own system. Ford’s was simple: a running count with a serial number on the engine block of every Model T.
Ford gamed the system so history happened when the moment was right.
“In effect, Ford built car No. 14,999,999 a few days earlier and then skipped ahead to No. 15,000,001 and up. When May 26 arrived, they simply went back and filled in the gap with the ceremonial car No. 15,000,000.
“The stamping of the serial number became a part of the ceremony, with Ford Motor Company’s eight senior-most employees each stamping a digit,” Anderson said.
Each of Ford’s eight longest-serving employees stamped one digit on the engine block:
The story of Mustang 001
The 15 millionth Model T is on display at the Henry Ford in Dearborn. So is Ford Mustang No. 1, which has its own story:
“Many refer to it as the first production Mustang,” Anderson said. “That may be accurate in a ceremonial sense, but we’ll probably never know if it’s the literal truth. When the first production Mustangs were assembled at the Rouge on Feb. 10, 1964, they had all been assigned VINs in advance of their actual builds.
“The first few cars were built on earlier test chassis. The chassis got transported from a warehouse to the Rouge and likely got scrambled, i.e., it’s entirely possible that the cars were assembled in a different order than the numerical order of their VINs.
“So, yes, our car is Mustang Serial No. 1, but it may not be the first Mustang built.”
That first Mustang is often referred to as a 1964½ model, but that’s incorrect. Officially, there’s no such thing as a partial model year: The regulation allows only whole numbers. Mustang 001 — and every other Mustang built for the car’s celebrated debut at the 1964 World’s Fair — is a ’65.
“It’s right there in the VIN on Serial No. 1,” Anderson said. “That’s what the initial “5” in the VIN means: 1965.”
Contact Mark Phelan: 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The secret story of how the final Model T got stamped into history
Reporting by Mark Phelan, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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