1906-'08 Ford Model K made under protest
The Ford Model K could be called the car that history forgot, and even Henry Ford would rather have forgotten it.
It arrived in late 1905 as a 1906 model and was made until 1908, built under protest before Ford gained the iron-fisted control of the Ford Motor Co., he would later enjoy.
The Model K was a large, six-cylinder luxury car when most other luxury automakers were still making do with four cylinders or less. Cadillac, for example, was still building one-cylinder cars, although it added a four in 1905. Peerless got a six in 1908.
When Henry Ford finally got his Ford Motor Co., successfully launched in 1903 — his third attempt (the first went broke and the second became Cadillac) — he had the financial backing of Alexander Malcomson, a wealthy Detroit coal merchant.
In those early days, the automobile was often only affordable by the well-to-do like Malcomson. He was naturally influenced by his circle of friends and contacts and saw luxury cars as the way of the future. Ford came from more modest means, having been born on a farm near Dearborn, Mich.
Although mechanically talented, he was an unsophisticated man with deep suspicions of wealth and power. His idea — like that of Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile, who was building the popular, small Curved Dash Olds — was that cars should be affordable to the multitudes.
And the way to achieve it was to keep them basic and turn them out in large numbers.
“The way to make automobiles,” Ford said, “is to make one automobile like another automobile; to make them all alike . . .”
This philosophy would come to fruition in Ford’s beloved Model T, of which more than 15 million were built from 1908 to 1927.
But, in 1905, Malcomson still held the power, and although Ford built light cars such as the two-cylinder Models A and C and four-cylinder Model B, Malcomson saw a future with more luxury models because more than half the cars sold at that time were high-priced.
Thus, in 1905, the Ford Motor Co. introduced the Model K. It was a large luxury car, the opposite of what the Model T would be. It had a big 6.6-litre, 40-horsepower, side-valve, in-line six-cylinder engine. It was initially priced at $2,500, later raised to $2,800. This was a huge amount of money at the time, although it was still relatively inexpensive compared with other luxury cars.
The Model K’s six iron cylinders were individually cast integrally with their cylinder heads and bolted to the crankcase, as was common practice. It had a seven-main-breaking crankshaft and drove the rear wheels through a pedal-operated, two-speed planetary transmission, which proved marginal for the engine’s power. Suspension was by longitudinal leaf springs, not the transverse leaf springs for which Ford would become famous, and mechanical brakes operated on the rear wheels.
The K came as a touring car or roadster, with the lighter roadster guaranteed to reach 60 miles an hour (96 kilometres an hour), a performance benchmark at that time. In fact, a Model K driven by Frank Kulick and Bert Lorimer covered 1,827 km in 24 hours for an average of 76 km/h, a world record, proving that the K had both speed and durability.
Although Ford manoeuvred Malcomson out of the company in mid-1906, he allowed construction of the K to carry on until 1908, when the Model T arrived to sweep all before it. Despite the K’s high price, it is unlikely Ford made any money on it, although it did add a measure of prestige. Ford wouldn’t build another six-cylinder until 1941.
Although the Model K never sold in large numbers and is now largely forgotten, today’s market has placed a premium on it as a collectible. Good Model Ks can command prices of more than $250,000 at car auctions.