Mud was another hazard, in the days before widespread asphalt paving. This fellow finds himself and his Model T axle-deep and, at least momentarily, out of the running in a transcontinental race in 1909. But a Model T did come in first in a competition that stretched 4,100 miles from New York to Seattle. The winning trek took 22 days, 55 minutes, with an average speed of 7.75 miles per hour.
In 1905, before the Model T came along, there were about 77,000 registered passenger cars in the United States, and 2,000 other motor vehicles, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 1925, the number of registered passenger cars had risen to 17.5 million, along with 2.6 million other vehicles. (In 2006, there were 134 million cars, out of 244 million registered vehicles.)
Photo by From the collections of The Henry Ford and Ford Motor
Caption by Jonathan Skillings
