On this day exactly one century ago, Ford's 1 millionth car was completed — but apparently, no one really noticed. According to the company, there were 25 assembly plants and the large Detroit factory which rolled out several cars a day.
Just two years prior in 1913, Henry Ford had introduced the revolutionary moving assembly line, massively increasing productivity. Now, rather than building cars one-at-a-time as every other car manufacturer did, Ford mass-produced a single car: the Model T.
Mass production proved beneficial to Ford by providing the company with opportunities that smaller automakers could not compete with, saving the company money (which they passed on to their customers). When Ford started selling the Model T in 1908, it cost about $850 at the time (today's equivalent of approximately $20,000). By the final production years of the Model T in 1927, however, it only cost $300 (which would be about $3,700 today).
By 1927, just over a decade after hitting the one-million-mark, Ford had produced 15 million cars. Though Ford had an impressive production rate at that time, it still doesn't hold a candle to its massive output today.