Ford Model T Tourer

For many years the Ford Model T could claim to be the world’s best-selling car, with 15,007,033 made. It was only in 1972 that the Volkswagen beetle passed the record that had been established in 1927 when the Model T came to the end of a 19-years production run.

Farmer’s son Henry Ford – born in the USA the son of an Irish family - sold his first automobile in 1903, and very logically called it the Model A. Although not every letter of the alphabet was used in the production from Henry’s Detroit factory by 1908 it was the turn of the Model T.

With a simple frame chassis, 2.9-litre four-cylinder engine, two-speed gearbox and only a transmission brake, the ‘Tin Lizzie’ was basic and affordable, intended by Ford to ‘put America on wheels’. Ford did not invent the production line but he was the early master of mass production. In addition to the ever-expanding factory in the USA, the Model T was manufactured in Canada and the UK (at Trafford Park, Manchester) and assembled from kits in many other countries.

An outspoken character (famously he sailed to Europe in 1915 to try and mediate between the sides in the Great War) Henry Ford will be remembered for saying that ‘history is bunk’.

About this vehicle

This Manchester made car has a unique link to Shuttleworth in that it was owned locally from 1913 when it was sold to Albert Grimmer, who ran the Flitt Motor Company in Ampthill, and who registered it for trade use as a six-seater hackney carriage.

Albert was a keen pioneering aeronautist and rescued the Collection’s 1909 Blériot and 1910 Deperdussin aeroplanes, eventually becoming a close friend of Richard Shuttleworth, who acquired both in 1935 on the proviso he gave them a good home.

The Ford was eventually sold by Grimmer in 1948, having been in his possession for nearly 35 years. It was later purchased by Shuttleworth Vehicle Collection manager Stuart Gray, who was keen to reunite the car with both the Blériot and Deperdussin.