Henry Ford with the 1896 Quadricycle and the 10 millionth Ford vehicle, a Model T. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u201cHe had ample grounds for his skepticism \u2014 to use the mildest terms. \u2026 No storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Ford created<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ford\u2019s idea of a horseless carriage coalesces around the internal combustion engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs,\u201d Ford wrote of his self-described horseless carriage, with its ethanol engine producing four horsepower. Power was funneled to the rear wheels via chain drive. It weighed 500 pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere were two speeds \u2014 one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour \u2014 obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright, the engine could run free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo start the car, it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand with the clutch free. To stop the car, one simply released the clutch and applied the foot brake. There was no reverse. The wheels were twenty-eight-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once completed, Ford realized he had another problem: the vehicle was wider than the shed\u2019s door. Ford took an axe to the wood door frame and brick wall, rolling his new Quadricycle onto the streets of Detroit on June 4, 1896, with a friend, Jim Bishop, riding ahead of him on a bicycle as Ford drove along Grand River Avenue in Detroit, crossing three major thoroughfares. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ford sold the Quadricycle in late 1896 for $200, to Charles Ainsley of Detroit, with the money put towards building Ford\u2019s next car. Still, it would be another seven years, and two failed attempts at starting a car company, before Ford Motor Co. was successfully established in 1903, and another 12 years until he introduced his crowning achievement: the Ford Model T.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in 1896, even Ford couldn\u2019t know how much his passion for automobiles would change America and the world, forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was an anniversary that went by mostly unnoticed on Friday, yet its eventual impact would change America forever. For it marked the 125 years ago that Henry Ford drove his first car: the Quadricycle. That vehicle led to Ford Motor Co., $5 a day and the middle class, reports TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13752,"featured_media":203289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,905],"tags":[364,908,906,907,344],"make":[],"post-state":[335],"category_old":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203285"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203295,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203285\/revisions\/203295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203285"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=203285"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=203285"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=203285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}