CHARLEVOIX, Michigan — In the 1920s, the Ford Model T transformed America.

Bringing affordable, personal transportation to the masses, “Tin Lizzies” — as Model Ts were fondly nicknamed — established Detroit as a manufacturing colossus, made farming more efficient, replaced the train as the primary means of long-distance transport, and opened rural areas like northern Michigan to tourist travel.

A century later, Ford Motor Co.'s Model Ts are still plying the roads — and turning heads — here thanks to its durable design, dedicated repair infrastructure and passionate owners.

Mary Carr Leatherman is celebrating the 100th birthday of her family’s 1925 T this year by going on long country drives with her sister, Irene, and husband, John Dean. With its two-speed transmission and 40-mph top speed, the four-cylinder Ford can be seen chugging along Charlevoix County’s two-lane roads in daily traffic.

“It's a special feeling, because I like antique things,” said Dean, 78, decked out in 1920s-style goggles, flat cap and elbow-length leather gloves. Mary and Irene sit behind him, resplendent in full period white skirts. “I keep thinking about what (the Model T) was like then, what the people were like, and what they experienced when they were driving it. It's a bit of a reverse time machine.”

Made from 1908 to 1927, Model T production revved up after 1910 when it moved to Ford’s Highland Park facility, reaching more than 2 million units a year by 1925. Prices dropped from $850 in 1909 (about $30,000 in today’s dollars) to $260 in 1925 (about $5,000 today), making it widely affordable with 10,000 cars a day rolling off the line. Henry Ford and his son drove the last Model T — the 15 millionth — off the line in May 1927.

Leatherman’s grandfather Richard Sr. purchased the T in 1925 in Commerce, Mississippi, where he used it as a daily driver on his cotton farm. Two generations later, his grandson, Richard Jr., moved the car to Memphis, Tennessee, where it made cameo appearances — like transporting Mary and Irene to their weddings.

“I remember as a child my brother and first cousin, Ted, playing around with it — and my grandfather teaching them how to drive it,” said Leatherman, 71. “They loved cars.”

One hundred years on, the Model T’s revolutionary design is still remarkably relevant. Its left-side drive makes it easy for passengers to exit curbside (legend has it Henry Ford designed it that way so his wife, Clara, could safely exit to the curb). Its Model T nomenclature has been copied by Tesla Inc., which fancies its popular electric vehicles (Model X, Model 3, etc.) as Ford's 21st-century successor. And its high-riding, good-visibility seating position dovetails with the current craze for high-riding SUVs.

In the 1920s, that tall wheelbase was essential to navigating rutted, muddy, horse-and-buggy roads that were suddenly busy with thousands of Fords. It is hard to understate how the T changed life here.

Reliable, durable and powerful, Model T proliferated on farms.

“It was called ‘the farmer’s friend,’” Ford Heritage and Brand Manager Ted Ryan said in an interview. “Its tall wheelbase was essential to navigating rutted roads, and its versatility made it a tremendous farm tool. Like an F-series platform toy, you could put different top hats on it, from a four-door to a pickup bed.”

Farmers used the T for a variety of farm chores, including hooking up wheat thrashers, running grist mills and transporting goods to market. “The only thing that limited the Model T was the imagination of the owner,” Ryan said.

Leatherman and Dean brought their Model T to Charlevoix because their extended family reunions are here each summer. And because it felt like home.

“When my father died, he sent (the T) back to the farm in Mississippi ... and no one was caring for it,” Leatherman said. “My sister and I decided we would put this project in (John’s) hands, because he loves a challenge. And Michigan, of course, is the car state.”

They follow in the tire tracks of scores of Model T owners who headed north a century ago with their new contraptions. Before the T, northern Michigan had mostly been accessible only to upper-income families who would load their families on trains for long hotel stays.

Charlevoix, for example, had some 1,000 hotel rooms in 1920 — and just 350 today. The move away from trains toward automobiles was signified by the closure of Charlevoix’s massive, 250-room hotel, The Inn, in 1937.

“The effect of reduced train ridership due to the continued rise of the automobile sealed its fate after 43 seasons,” records a Charlevoix Historical Society documentary. “It has no room for parking for the large number of cars.”

Dean took the Model T to Ed Baudoux, one of Northern Michigan’s “Model T whisperers,” who restored the car to its original mechanical condition.

“People look at these cars and think they are worth a million dollars,” said Baudoux, who works from a barn behind his Grayling home. “But Ford made 15 million of them. The Model T is the poor man’s collector car.”

Model Ts today can fetch anywhere from $5,000-$20,000 with good restorations somewhere in between, said Baudoux. Rare models like a two-door Runabout might push $50K. Along with help from Jeff Humble, president of the Northern Michigan Ts (the local Model T club), Dean trained himself to drive the Model T using an original owner’s manual as thick as Manhattan’s phone book. A Ford poster on his wall prescribes regular maintenance.

“I've driven a modern stick car for a good part of my life, and you have to unlearn that, because the Model T methodology (of) levers, pedals and the tools of the car are not common sense. They're not what you're used to,” Dean said. “My new best friends Ed and Jeff were very patient with me.”

Dean juggles the controls as he drives — an art that he has passed on to Richard Leatherman Sr.’s 16-year-old great-great grandson, Richard.

For all its accessibility to average drivers, the Model T required owners to pay attention to mechanical detail. A six-volt battery under the rear seat powers the flywheel magneto ignition system. The nine-gallon gas tank is under the driver’s seat, requiring a careful fill lest fuel drip on the hot exhaust running beneath the car. A single carburetor delivers fuel to four pistons, and Dean closes the fuel line valve when the car is not in operation.

“Allow the fuel to run low, and the Model T might stall on an incline due to its gravity-fed fuel line from tank to carburetor,” Humble, who owns three Ts, said in an interview. Should that happen, he explained, drivers would turn the car around, put the T in reverse gear (thus allowing fuel to flow downhill into the carburetor) and drive it backwards up the hill.

Sideboards make for easy access to the driver’s seat (via the right passenger door only), where operators encountered a blizzard of controls, including a parking brake, three floor pedals (left clutch/first gear, center clutch/reverse gear, right engine brake), floor-mounted starter button, dash key and choke, steering wheel-mounted accelerator stalk and spark plug advance.

“It was a unique system that Ford designed for the Model T,” said Baudoux, 59, who learned to work on Ts at Saginaw’s Douglas MacArthur High School at the foot of shop teacher — and renowned Model T whisperer — Robert Scherzer. Scherzer’s class built a 1923 Model T pickup that is one of two Ts Baudoux owns today.

“By the time the Model T went into mass production, it was obsolete,” said the Grayling mechanic, citing the relentless pace of automotive development in the early 20th century. “But Henry Ford was a manufacturing genius and kept making the T more affordable.”

The T’s successor, the Model A (one of which Baudoux also owns), in 1927, adopted the three-pedal clutch system familiar to stick-shift cars today. But the T was simply designed and repeatable to make — a feature demonstrated by the Model T Club of Greater St. Louis, which publicly assembles a T in 10 minutes every year. With so many Ts still alive today, a global supply chain has grown to support it: tires made in Vietnam, axle shafts from Taiwan, radiators by Brassworks in California.

“The Model T was brilliantly designed,” Humble said. “It could be put together quickly and reliably. For a public that had never driven a car before, it was a clever, easy introduction into automobiles.”

In northern Michigan, the T phenomenon brought a flood of visitors onto an antiquated road system. Among them was Henry Ford himself.

“He loved walking the walk,” said archivist Ryan. “He loved his Ts and making people’s lives easier.”

Paved roads were largely exclusive to Metro Detroit in the early 20th century (the first concrete road was built in Motown in 1909) with out-state roads mostly dirt or gravel, co-traveled by horse-and-buggy. The American Automobile Association was formed in 1902 as 23,000 cars joined 17 million horses on the roads.

By 1916, Model Ts were transforming travel, and AAA instituted roadside assistance for stranded travelers. Fuel? Travelers carried their own cans, buying petrol at general stores where kerosene was also sold (for lighting and cooking). AAA spearheaded a campaign for better roads, including federal funding for highways. Gas stations began to pop up on heavily-trafficked routes and, by 1919, gas had surpassed kerosene as the best-selling U.S. petroleum product.

Each year, Humble said, the northern Michigan Ts get together to make a trip around the region's roads, including through the Tunnel of Trees and over the mighty Mackinac Bridge.

It’s a trip that Dean and Leatherman want to do someday with their new friends Jeff, Ed ... and more.

“Once you start talking about (old) cars in this part of Michigan ... it’s very different,” Dean smiled.“ There’s a gentleman in Petoskey that specializes in replacement carburetors. There's this network that just goes all over the place, and every time you turn around, you end up with yet another new friend.”

One of Henry Ford’s favorite destinations was Lovells Township, just 23 miles northeast of Baudoux’s Grayling shop, where the Ford founder enjoyed fishing on the Au Sable River beginning in 1916. The Lovells Township Historical Society recounted to promotemichigan.com how Ford once met a local, frustrated Model T owner who had stalled his Model T on an incline.

Ford turned the car around, put it in reverse, then backed it up the hill.

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