In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the Edsel, Time magazine has published its list of the 50 worst cars of all time. I usually ignore such lists, because the main reason commercial sites like Time put them on the web — with only one entry per web page — is to get you to click on as many of their web pages (and view as many annoying ads) as possible.
A commercial success but a marketing failure.
This list, however, earned Time a lot of mouse clicks from me after I found the second car on the chronological list was the Model T Ford — probably the most important car ever made. The Model T made Henry Ford a billionaire and allowed him to double worker pay — an action that reverberated throughout the economy. The Model T’s low cost brought mobility to the masses and made a huge contribution to the economic growth of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. Largely because of the Model T, Time‘s sister magazine, Fortune, named Henry Ford the “businessman of the 20th century.”
So why did Dan McNeil, a Pulitzer-prize winning auto critic, put the Model T on his list? What were his criteria for putting any car on the list?
