The Model T Makes the 50 Worst List, Really!?

I realize this was written up in 2007, and I am coming at it three years too late, but Time magazine should really do a better job of explaining itself with this one. According to their article "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time," Ford's Model T makes the list because "a century later, the consequences of putting every living soul on gas-powered wheels are piling up."

Dan Neil is kind of known for wanting to be the "bad boy" of automobile journalism. Heck, it's served him well in the past. But reading his stuff sometimes feels like reading movie reviews by some brooding grad student who criticizes everything simply because he doesn't have the imagination to appreciate anything.

This list is a prime example. In this short paragraph on the Model T, problems abound, the least of which is that the Model T itself is not responsible for putting America on wheels: Henry Ford is; James Couzens is; the Dodge brothers are. And that's only if your view of history is so narrow that you only focus on a couple "movers and shakers" and miss the waves of historic change that made the Model T successful. The car itself was nothing more than the vehicle for this change (pun not intended). The writer also seem to ignore the irony that he is blaming the first mass produced marvel for this blight on the world, a blight that he profits from as a "Pulitzer-prize winning automobile critic."

Another problem with the discussion is it seems to again focus on one thing, the negative results of everyone in America owning a car. I agree, the legacy of the automobile is pretty terrible. But can we imagine a world without cars? Is Dan Neil typing away on his laptop if the world turned its back on industrialization in the early 20th century? While I also bemoan the industrialization of agriculture, I know many a family farmer whose fortunes changed with the Ford 8N and its competitors. Tractors that lightened the back-breaking work of working a farm, made possible by the success of the Model T. And this is just one of a million benefits human society has reaped from this revolutionary automobile. (Sheesh, what about the $5 day?!)

Finally, I think Mr. Neil needs to spend less time wandering around the "international car show," and spend a few weekends at Greenfield Village during their Old Car Festival. No one who has taken a look at the Model Ts on display there would call this car a "piece of junk, the Yugo of its day." (Strangely, he fluctuates on his disdain for the Model T. A year later, Mr. Neil told NPR. "It was a wonderful invention, the Model T and the mass-mobility automobile.")

It is misleading to use a list of history's "worst cars" as a platform from which to gripe about the auto industry. And it's very hard to take an "auto critic" seriously who would rather appear to lack the fundamental capacity to appreciate a car for what it is than pass up a chance to criticize an entire industry's impact on the world.