When you climb into an early 1900s-era Ford Model T, it’s obviously a very different experience than slipping behind the wheel of, say, a modern SUV. The T used a 2.9-liter four-cylinder engine rated at about 20 horsepower (!).

For perspective, the lowest-powered car on the U.S. market now, the Mitsubishi Mirage, touts a relatively “mousy” 76 hp. Mitsubishi will discontinue the tiny sedan after this year, by the way. Just for additional context, the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 (the most powerful production muscle car in the world) outputs 1,025 hp. Yowza.

The Tesla Model S Plaid trails the Demon closely…1,020 horses. So, while our modern engines’ force might literally make us carsick, we’ve sure come a long way in 100 years.

That being said, most of us are also familiar with the (too often, crushing) obligation that goes along with such vigor: the car payment.

Because I think these sort of musings are fun, well, let’s do so:

How much would you have to take home in order to comfortably visit a Ford dealer in, say, 1923, and take home a Model T?

I’ll start with some Model T specs and features.

The Ford Model T had a two-speed planetary transmission (plus reverse), rear-wheel drive, primitive mechanical brakes, solid axles, and wooden artillery wheels. You started it by hand crank, though later models added an electric starter.

On a good road, you might coax it to 35 or 40 mph. Anything faster was pushing your luck. Wind buffeted you, dust and grit blew in, and the steering felt heavy and unassisted.

The Model T went on sale in October 1908 as a 1909 model, priced around $825 for the basic two-seat Runabout and $850 for the four-seat touring car

Those prices were far lower than the $2,000 to $4,000 luxury cars of the era, but Ford wasn’t satisfied.

As production scaled up and the moving assembly line came online in 1913, costs dropped. By 1914, a touring car cost about $440. Prices kept falling through the 1920s, hitting a low of about $260 by 1925. According to Ford media, the automaker built the final Model T in May 1927, after producing more than 15 million of them.

For the sake of understanding its real-world affordability, the 1923 Model T Touring (the highest-selling version of the car) is a useful benchmark

That model typically sold for around $290, and 1923 was the peak year for Model T sales, with more than 1.8 million units built.

Average wages in the 1910s and early 1920s varied widely. Still, many workers earned around $500 to $1,000 per year.

Ford famously boosted his own factory workers’ pay to $5 per day in 1914, a substantial jump over industry norms. Even so, buying a Model T early on could eat up close to a full year of gross income. It was possible, but it wasn’t easy.

A car built for ordinary Americans…and it delivered

The Model T was designed from the start as an affordable, mass-market car. Henry Ford’s goal was to build a simple, durable vehicle that working-class Americans could buy and maintain. 

That was a radical idea in 1908, when most cars were handmade playthings for the wealthy, often priced above $2,000. By the way, that’s the equivalent of more than $60,000 today. Sounds awfully close to what many new cars cost today, huh? If you want a top-trim 2025 Toyota Tacoma, there you go.

Anyway, Ford achieved that goal not just by pricing the Model T lower but by reimagining how cars were built. Lighter materials, interchangeable parts, and the introduction of the moving assembly line in 1913 slashed production costs and time.

As those efficiencies piled up, the sticker price kept dropping. The $825 Runabout was already far cheaper than rival cars, but by 1914 the Model T cost about $440. By 1923, the best-selling touring model was about $290. That’s roughly $5,000 to $6,000 in today’s money. Obviously, this is a price point no new car even comes close to now.

At first, the Model T was still beyond the reach of many households. But Ford’s relentless cost-cutting and wage-raising strategy soon changed that. Within a few years, millions of middle-class and working-class Americans could realistically buy a car for the first time. By 1927, Ford had built more than 15 million Model Ts, and the automobile had transformed from luxury to necessity.

What that cost means in today’s money

Inflation gives a useful baseline, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Today’s buyers also contend with auto loans, down payments, interest rates, and income-to-payment ratios that didn’t exist in 1923.

A typical new-car loan today runs 60 to 72 months with a 10- to 20% down payment and an interest rate around 6 to 9% (if you’ve got decent credit). Most lenders recommend that monthly payments stay below 15% of take-home pay.

If we imagine buying a $25,000 car, roughly equivalent to the burden of buying a Model T new, with a 20% down payment ($5,000) and financing the remaining $20,000 over five years at 7 percent, the monthly payment comes out to about $396.

To make that payment manageable at around 12% of take-home pay, a buyer would need a net monthly income of about $3,300. That translates to a gross annual income in the ballpark of $50,000 to $60,000. A longer loan term would lower the monthly payment but increase the total cost.

You might be surprised to find you could have well-afforded a Model T in 1923

The Ford Model T redefined what “affordable” meant, not just by cutting the price of entry but by changing the economics of car ownership. Today, no new car is anywhere near as inexpensive in inflation-adjusted dollars. That says less about the Model T being cheap than it does about just how revolutionary Ford’s idea really was, no?

Now, that isn’t to say automakers aren’t trying. OEMs are scrambling to launch mass-marketable cars that are cheap to buy, safe, efficient, high-tech (but not too techy…we’re looking at you, touchscreens), and profitable. And boy, in 2025, that last one makes the whole business of building cars a head-scratcher.