At peak efficiency, it took 93 minutes to produce a Ford Model T chassis. This dramatic reduction came from Ford’s development of moving assembly-line production at the Highland Park plant in Michigan.
Before the streamlined system, Model Ts were assembled largely by hand, and chassis work took several hours. Ford divided production into specialized operations, brought parts to workers in a fixed sequence, and gradually moved the chassis past stationary teams. By 1914, the improved process had cut chassis assembly time to 1 hour 33 minutes.
The figure refers to production time for the chassis, not the complete automobile from raw materials to finished delivery. It is also often confused with the three-minute interval between cars leaving the line. That interval described the pace of the completed assembly process, while 93 minutes measured the cumulative time needed to assemble a chassis.
The efficiency gains helped Ford lower prices and make the Model T accessible to middle-class buyers. Ford produced more than 15 million Model Ts between 1908 and 1927.