FARGO — The rumors were true. Henry Ford was at it again.
The Upper Midwest thrilled at the news.
It was 1927. Ford’s mass production of 15 million Model T cars —
— had all but created the automobile industry in the United States by making a car affordable to anyone with even a half-decent paycheck.
But by the late 1920s, the nearly two-decade-old Model T was
showing its age, its features surpassed
by shiny, new (and more expensive) vehicles made by
and
And then the word spread that Ford was personally designing a new automobile, something so groundbreaking that he might give it a name indicating how much of a fresh start it was.
The rumors about Henry Ford’s designed successor to the Model T turned out to be true, as described in this article in the May 26, 1927, edition of the Fargo Forum.
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It was a move reminiscent of the more-modern furor surrounding each Tesla model released by Elon Musk.
Like Musk, Ford knew well how to juice the interest of his eager fans: Tease them with big promises.
“At present I can only say that the new model has speed, style, flexibility and control in traffic,”
that May. “There is nothing quite like it in quality and price.”
What happened next showed the public’s hunger for a reasonably priced, good-quality vehicle and the emerging power of advertising to drive customer behavior.
But in the Upper Midwest in 1927, the furor could be described with one simple term:
Model A mania.
Newspaper readers in Fargo were confronted that summer with
ads from the Frosaker-Donovan Ford dealership
meant to hype up excitement: “THE NEW Ford IS COMING.”
Interest was so high that in June,
someone stole Ford’s “preliminary and experimental” advertising
for the car from an agency in Philadelphia.
The tidbits kept coming.
Tidbits of rumors about the new Ford flew out of Michigan to newspapers nationwide, including in the July 30, 1927, edition of the Fargo Forum.
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In July, just before his 64th birthday, Ford himself was reportedly driving a mysterious vehicle around the Ford factory town of Dearborn, Michigan.
Among other claims,
he would name it after his good friend, inventor Thomas A. Edison.
“Most of these rumors have been misleading,” Ford said, with an almost audible wink.
Henry Ford, as show in the Nov. 29, 1927, edition of the Fargo Forum.
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To commentators who proclaimed that the automobile market was saturated and that Ford’s new addition would make matters worse, Ford made clear his global ambitions.
“You must realize that there are still parts of the world where whole families have never seen an automobile,”
The months rolled by, and people began to get antsy.
“It begins to look as though the new Ford is being made by Santa Claus for Christmas gifts,”
commented the Forum’s editorial page
in October.
Behind the scenes, Ford was laboring to make enough cars to even give each dealer one for display, a goal it would not meet. It would be
for Ford dealers, many of which had run out of cars to sell.
The new car would be known as the “Model A,”
Ford announced in late November.
The roll-out for the new car was scheduled for Friday, Dec. 2.
The public’s first view of the new Ford Model A, including its prices, was run in the final day of the Ford advertising blitz in the run-up to the vehicle’s release, as shown in the Dec. 1, 1927, edition of the Fargo Forum.
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Ford paid for a five-day advertising blitz “believed to be without parallel in the history of advertising”
across the country, at a cost of approximately $1.5 million (about $29 million today).
Full-page ads, paired with ads from local dealers, touted the new car, included a statement from Ford himself, and then — on the day before the car would be unveiled — finally provided the public their first look at the car’s models and prices.
There were
Niagara Blue, Arabian Sand, Dawn Gray and Gun Metal Blue.
They ranged from the Roadster at $385, or about $7,000 today, to the Fordor Sedan (as in, it had four doors) for $570, or about $11,000 today. All had 40-horsepower motors that provided a roaring top speed of 55-65 mph.
Local dealers bought large advertisements in newspapers advertising the first arrival of the Model A in their towns, as shown in this Dec. 9, 1927, edition of the Austin Daily Herald.
Contributed / Austin Daily Herald via Newspapers.com
“The new Ford,”
declared the manager of the dealership in Huron, South Dakota,
“will be the greatest value ever offered in automobile history.”
Forum newsboys took advantage of the moment, folding their newspapers so the ad was the first thing passersby would see.
“Wuxtry [Extra], all about da new Ford!”
Across the region,
thronged to Ford locations to see the new car, “the appearance of which has whetted the curiosity of the whole country for the last few months.”
Dealers kept track of the attendance, which Ford would later trumpet in national advertising:
and
North Dakota;
South Dakota, and
Many Upper Midwest residents got to look at the new Ford car in the face on Dec. 2, 1927, as reported in that day’s edition of the Fargo Forum.
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“With something akin to awe they approached the much talked of car,”
of Canton, South Dakota. “Some shook a fender to see if it rattled — it didn’t!”
People even flocked into dealerships which, lacking a new display Model A, made do by posting illustrations of the vehicle in their showrooms.
At the Walter P. Tyrholm Co. dealership in Brainerd,
for “the first real official showing of pictures and charts of the new Ford car.”
“On long stands the large colored pictures of every model are displayed,”
reported the Albert Lea Tribune.
“Above is a huge picture of Henry Ford.”
The Ford factory on North Broadway in Fargo was one place where people could see the Model A in person when it was unveiled Dec. 2, 1927.
Contributed / NDSU Archives
Other dealerships had to wait for a limited number of display models to arrive in their towns.
About 5,000 people crowded into Nelson Motor Sales in Rochester after “the long-awaited new Ford slipped into town unheralded over snow-covered roads,”
reported the Dec. 6 Rochester Post Bulletin.
In Ellendale, Minnesota, the local high school arranged to have a homemade mock-up of the new Ford wheeled into the gym during half-time of a basketball game, but “how it completed the trip is a mystery,”
“As it progressed it left a trail of nuts, bolts and washers clear around the room.”
The community pages were full of reports of small-town folks making the trip to the closest city to see the new Ford.
“Noble Robinson and Arthur Thompson made a flying trip to Minneapolis on Tuesday and returned with one of the new Fords in a sport model coupe,”
the Dec. 23, 1927, Rochester Post Bulletin’s St. Charles neighborhood news. “Frisch and Johnson garage seems to be the center of attraction and a gathering place for men especially since the new arrival.”
The evolution of Ford automobiles is described in this Dec. 2, 1927, edition of the Fargo Forum.
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“Since the new Ford can do 65 miles an hour on the open road, then with an efficient delivery boy at the wheel it ought to come bursting out of an alley into a busy street at about 90,”
sniffed the Duluth News Tribune editorial page.
It would, of course, be months until many Model A orders would be fulfilled, including preorders from those who had ordered sight-unseen.
In the meantime, the newspapers reported on everything about the Model A, including the
in the new Ford, in Illinois, and the
in Oklahoma.
“Now that everybody has seen the new Ford car, we can get down to business again and give a little attention to Congress,”
on its editorial page.
Editor’s note: This article is based on contemporaneous reporting from the Albert Lea Tribune, Austin Daily Herald, Bismarck Tribune, Brainerd Dispatch, Duluth News Tribune, Ellendale Eagle, Fargo Forum, Huron Daily Plainsman, Mandan Pioneer, Moorhead Daily News, Sioux Valley News, Willmar Weekly Tribune and Winona Daily News.