The sentence is printed on page 72 of Ford’s autobiography My Life and Work (1922), written in collaboration with Samuel Crowther — though the first edition spells it “colour.” Ford presents it there as a remark he made to his salesmen in 1909, thirteen years before the book appeared, and the all-black Model T did not actually arrive until 1914.
“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black” Henry Ford, My Life and Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922), p. 72. The first edition spells it "colour." Verified via quotle.info
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Provenance
Where it actually appears
Work
My Life and Work
Published
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922
Location
Chapter IV, “The Secret of Manufacturing and Serving,” p. 72
Written with
Samuel Crowther
Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be “Model T,” and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.” I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling people could not of course see the advantages that a single model would bring about in production.
1922 first edition, p. 72
Transcribed from the 1922 first edition, which prints the British spelling “colour.” The “color” form is how the line is usually quoted today, including by Wikiquote ↗.
The sentence appears verbatim in Chapter IV of My Life and Work (1922), the autobiography Ford produced with Samuel Crowther — full text at Project Gutenberg ↗.
Checked against the scan rather than a transcription: the line sits on printed page 72 of the 1922 Doubleday, Page & Company first edition, spelled “colour” — Internet Archive ↗.
Wikiquote ↗ lists it in its sourced section at My Life and Work, p. 72, Chapter IV, describing it as a remark about the Model T in 1909 that “has often been paraphrased.”
The quip outran the cars: The Henry Ford ↗ states that “contrary to popular belief, not all Ford Model T cars were painted black,” and that the black-only policy began in 1914.
✓Public domain
My Life and Work was first published in 1922 by Doubleday, Page & Company; its United States copyright has long since expired, which is why Project Gutenberg ↗ distributes the complete text and the Internet Archive hosts a full scan of the first edition. The sentence may be quoted freely.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets garbled
Ford really did put this sentence in print, under his own name. What travels is a tidied-up version of it — attached to a story that does not quite match the cars.
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Wording“You can have any color as long as it’s black” paraphrase
The famous short form is a compression of Ford’s sentence, not his own phrasing. Wikiquote ↗ notes that the line “has often been paraphrased, e.g.: ‘You can have any color as long as it’s black.’”
✕
Spelling“color” where the book prints “colour” variant
Ford dates the remark to 1909, but the cars were not black-only then. Wikipedia’s Model T article ↗ records grey, green, blue and red bodies across 1908–1913, and The Henry Ford ↗ puts the start of the black-only policy at 1914.
My Life and Work was produced in collaboration with the business journalist Samuel Crowther, who is credited alongside Ford on the 1922 title page ↗ and in the Project Gutenberg record ↗. The polished line reached print through that partnership, thirteen years after the meeting it describes.
✓The sentence is genuinely Ford’s, printed under his name on page 72 of My Life and Work (1922) ↗. What is shakier is the anecdote around it: he wrote it in 1922 about a meeting he says took place in 1909, and the all-black Model T did not arrive until 1914.
Context
Why it mattered
It reads like a joke, but it is a manufacturing policy. Ford’s book frames the line as the moment he told his salesmen there would be one model and one chassis for every car the company built — and the salesmen, he adds, were unconvinced: “I cannot say that any one agreed with me.” Standardising the paint was simply the most quotable end of standardising everything else.
That is why the line outlived the car. It became the shorthand for the whole bargain of mass production — enormous choice in price and availability, almost none in specification — and it still gets deployed, usually with a raised eyebrow, whenever a company offers a customer exactly one option.
A production constraint that happened to land like a punchline.
Why black — and when the colours came back
The Henry Ford, the museum built from Ford’s own collection, is blunt that the popular picture is wrong: “Contrary to popular belief, not all Ford Model T cars were painted black.” Several colours were available at the start, the black-only policy began in 1914, and colour options returned on the final 1926–27 cars — see the museum’s record of Model T bodies being painted at Highland Park in 1915 ↗.
The museum gives the reasons as practical rather than aesthetic: black paint was cheap and durable, and restricting production to a single colour streamlined the manufacturing operation.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1863–1947 · American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company
Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and put out the Model T for the 1908–1909 season — the car that, with the moving assembly line behind it, turned the automobile from a rich man’s toy into ordinary equipment. His governing idea was one model, built the same way every time: standardise everything, drive the price down, and let volume do the rest. He set that philosophy down in My Life and Work (1922), the memoir he produced with the business journalist Samuel Crowther.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922), 72.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/any-customer-can-have-a-car-painted-any-color-that-he-wants/