But do you know why black was Ford's preferred colour choice?Ford's biographer, Nevins, discounts that story. It came from an early factory worker's recollections. Like many such stories, Ford rebuilt it into legend. He was a master at p.r.
The first "T's" in 1909 were red and gray, then Brewster Green. BUT, black did become the only color, and you are right.
The black paint dried quickest.
Yep. And carbon pigment was cheapest, aside from oxide red hues made from iron and other oxides, [*rust*] as per flat-red barn paint.
The Pennsylvania Railroad came to the same conclusion in that same era with their dark *Brunswick Green* for passenger cars and locomotives, a green so dark as to be indistinguishable from black except in the brightest daylight. And the thousands upon thousands of freight equipment and locos painted in the Pennsy's red-oxide *Freight-car colour* may not have been as glossy, but were cheaper to maintain.