Uh-oh. Here comes trouble. Let's stipulate that the Model T did
everything that the history books say: It put America on wheels,
supercharged the nation's economy and transformed the landscape in ways
unimagined when the first Tin Lizzy rolled out of the factory. Well,
that's just the problem, isn't it? The Model T — whose mass production
technique was the work of engineer William C. Klann, who had visited a
slaughterhouse's "disassembly line" — conferred to Americans the notion
of automobility as something akin to natural law, a right endowed by our
Creator. A century later, the consequences of putting every living soul
on gas-powered wheels are piling up, from the air over our cities to
the sand under our soldiers' boots. And by the way, with its
blacksmithed body panels and crude instruments, the Model T was a piece
of junk, the Yugo of its day.
