MTFCA Forum

What was date the last car was assembled at the Piquette Plant?

A fascinating question! Wikipedia (gasp!) says only that Ford had moved most of its car production to Highland Park by January, 1910 and had completely vacated the Piquette building by October, 1910.

So the date is 1910.

Piquette webpage:

The first Model T built for sale was completed on September 27, 1908. Production began with a trickle—just 11 Model Ts were built in October. By December, production rose to 200 cars a month. Soon, every available inch of the plant was devoted to the enormously popular car. Engines and axles were assembled on the ground floor. The second floor housed light machining and sub-assembly.

By the end of 1909, a new plant in nearby Highland Park was ready, and automobile production was transferred from Piquette Avenue to Highland Park in January 1910.

In just five years, the building had served its purpose, launching several automotive legends: the Model N, the Model T, Henry Ford, and Ford Motor Company.

So, seems that last Piquette built Ford was serial number 14,499.***


*** Serial numbers, B. McCalley big book, page 502...." Jan. 6 14,500 First Car in 1910"

I'll bet it was messier than the historians care to document. On some date, likely late calendar year 1909, an order would have gone out to the vendors to send all new parts shipments to Highland Park. Cars were still being assembled by multiple teams, so some teams would have moved to Highland Park early on to initiate assembly there, while other teams remained behind at Piquette to use up the remaining inventory. At some point, there wouldn't have been enough inventory left at Piquette to allow final assembly of cars to continue, so the word would have come down to box up what remained and take it to Highland Park. There may even have been a transition time where subassemblies were still being built at Piquette to use up inventory, then taken to Highland Park for assembly into cars there. Whoever had to decide from one day to the next which employees should show up at which facility would have been pulling their hair out!

I noticed that the Piquette home page says that the first 12,000 Model Ts were built there. That's a convenient round number, too convenient IMO to be believable.

https://www.fordpiquetteplant.org/about/history/

I asked Royce P. if he had ever run across any useful info on this subject during his visits to the Ford archives and he said he hadn't. I'm hoping that Trent B. will see this thread and contribute his findings/opinions.

I appreciate all that replied to my inquiry. I didn't realize how quickly Ford outgrew Piquette, and that Highland Park grew so early.

Bear with me as I am working from memory here.

The first thing to remember is that Ford did not move from Piquette to Highland Park overnight on December 31, 1909. It was a gradual transition as one department after another moved to Highland Park. It was the final assembly department that was moved to Highland Park on January 1, 1910, not all of the manufacturing departments.

This worked well for Ford since Highland Park was still under construction (and would remain so for at least 10 more years), and as departments left Piquette the newly vacated space was available for the departments still remaining to expand their production. So Ford was able to continue to expand Model T production by increasing component production at both locations for over a year until Highland Park was sufficiently built up that all operations could be moved there.

I do recall that two of the last departments to make the move were magneto and administration. This makes sense because both of these departments had substantial numbers of women employees. Administration had women clerical workers and magneto had many women employees because they were much better at winding the magneto coils (nibble, dexterous fingers) than men. Women employees had to be treated differently from men to protect their safety and provide conveniences for them. Magneto production continued at Piquette through 1910 and into 1911.

Ford did not complete the move to Highland Park until well into 1911. The administration department was supposedly the last to leave just about the end of May when the new administration building (located at the corner of Woodward and Manchester) was completed. Studebaker took over the Ford Piquette property in June, 1911.

Respectfully submitted,

Trent Boggess

Thank you Trent B, and all.

I would like to ask a question being Engine number 33435 from November 10, 1910.
So, that would have been a Highland Park Build Engine? Previous posts would indicate that....
Alan In Western Australia

Alan, it would certainly seem so.

Taking the statement on the Piquette website about the first 12,000 Model Ts being produced there at face value, and looking in Bruce's book, it says that engine #12,000 was assembled on October 21, 1909.

As someone already mentioned, Bruce's table has an annotation next to engine #14,500 saying "first car in 1910". The assembly date for this engine was January 6, 1910. So the annotation must refer to calendar year 1910, not fiscal year.

Maybe the date for the last T assembled at Piquette can be backed out from the opposite direction - what was the serial number of the first Model T delivered from Highland Park? You would think that this would be a newsworthy event that would have been recorded at the time. So far, I haven't had any documentation of this event, but I'll keep searching.

Mark.
Thank you for the reply.
The Engine in question was one in a batch that were shipped to Walkerville Canada
The documents from HFM reads, Special Right Hand Control, Kingston Carburettor and “C” Head Plus the usual Inspectors name
of Lewis November 21, 1910
Appreciate any clarification on it being a Highland Park Build
Regards Alan