This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Ross, Thomas, Farwell, Ford Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/4223 Message Board Post: THE FREMONT COUNTY HERALD. Sept. 6, 1904. -- "A $4,000 Automobile".-- Some little excitement was caused on our streets yesterday evening by the appearance of a tourist automobile car. It was sure a fine outfit. There were three men and two women who were going to their home at Leavenworth, Kans. They purchased a $4,000 machine at Toledo, Ohio, and went from there to New York and were coming back. A large number of people gathered about the tourists looking at the thirty horse power auto and its unique equipments. N.B.: Henry Ford's Model T began production Oct. 1, 1908 and ended production on May 27, 1927. The first of these cost $850, but during the 1920s the price had fallen to $300. Many can visualize what a Model T looked like, so just what was it that made the Leavenworth car so expensive?......In 1915, John Ross, Leslie Ross, Joy Thomas and Clyde Farwell drove John Ross's 1914 Ford Tourist Car to the San Francisco Exposition, but it certainly could not have been purchased for any price like $4,000 (they didn't have that kind of money)!.....In 1908, cars competing with Henry Ford's cost between $2000 and $3000.....Every so often, I find clippings about so - and - so in Fremont county owning a car, so if those clippings date before the Model T, it seems one needs to add a dimension (green colored) to the biographies of those early Fremont county automobile owners!--W.F.