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FaSTER฀FlIvvERS,฀฀ 1915–1927 c h a p t e r o n e In the 1910s, automobile production, sales, and use in the United States began to grow at a feverish pace. Total domestic production swelled nearly tenfold between 1911 and 1917, and new automobile registrations rose by more than 400 percent . Per capita automobile ownership doubled every two years, and from New York to Los Angeles, new dealers, service stations, and parking garages cropped up in droves. New highways were in the works as well, as federal, state, and local officials across the country struggled to deal with the dramatic increase in motorized traffic. It was the beginning of a transportation revolution.1 At the heart of these developments was the Ford Motor Company. Between 1911 and 1916 more than 1.5 million “universal cars” rolled out of its assembly plants, fully 36 percent of all automobiles manufactured in America during those years. Annual output at Ford grew at an average of 65 percent, and the firm’s production costs tumbled dramatically. Sales were brisk, and as early as 1915 better than one in two new registrations each year were for Model Ts.2 How Ford managed to achieve all of this is now a well-known tale of manufacturing, marketing , and labor relations breakthroughs that needn’t be recounted here;3 what matters, rather, is that Ford’s spectacular success did much to usher in the age of mass automobility. And for this feat, history has not forgotten Henry Ford and his revolutionary Model T. Enthusiasts aside, however, few seem to remember that the Model T also forever changed the face of American motorsports in the 1910s. Before the mass production of the universal car, high-performance motoring was a luxury far beyond the means of all but the very wealthiest of Americans. High-dollar, handbuilt racing specials dominated on oval-track and road-racing circuits across the 14 t h e b u s i n e s s o f s p e e d United States, and on the streets, low and moderately priced horseless carriages simply were no match for high-end Deusenburgs and Benzes. But as the conventional front-engine, rear-drive Model T became available in the early 1910s, it quickly earned an upstart’s reputation among performance enthusiasts. As early as September of 1914, the editors of one popular-market periodical, The Fordowner , proudly reported that “many a Ford owner has stripped the fenders and body from his car, strapped a pillow onto the gasoline tank, and entered the races at the home town fair or the more pretentious yearly event at the county seat.”4 The following summer, modified Model Ts built for high-speed street use began to surface as well, and the editors of The Fordowner quickly found themselves celebrating, on the one hand, the fact that “in every community, no matter how small, some one has changed his Ford as to body and engine, so that he can get more speed than the average touring car,” and condemning, on the other, the lawless driving habits these cars encouraged.5 Abundant and cheap, the Model T enabled thousands of ordinary Americans to begin to enjoy the thrills of dirt-track racing and high-speed highway travel as never before—that is, as participants. Taking part required a knack for things mechanical, however. For the Model T was rugged and versatile but not fast, and only very rarely was it possible to “show the differential to anything on the road” in an ordinary Ford simply by removing the fenders and donning a pair of driving goggles.6 At the very least, one had to make some basic changes to the car’s gangly suspension and humble powerplant. Mechanically inclined enthusiasts could do both, but many more with both the means and the desire could do neither. Here, then, was a market for an entirely new type of product, and in 1915 high-performance parts and accessories for the lowly Ford began to trickle into circulation. By the end of the decade, a handful of firms built and sold hundreds of Model T performance products, and during the 1920s, dozens more would join the fray. Performance tuning and the speed equipment industry began with the Model T; our story begins, therefore, in the era of the universal car. model t accessories and speed equipment More than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured between 1908 and 1927, an international automotive...

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