Ooh, I'm glad i got to this; this is quite interesting. HF's attempt to break into the armored car market is quite interesting (and obscure - this might actually be worthy of the "secret history" thread, since much of the most up-to-date research on this is as-yet unpublished, being done by some dedicated amateurs in the major Model T clubs).

Henry Ford was a businessman above all else, and when he learned of the armored car's breathtaking successes on the battlefields of the First World War he was quite determined to "get in on the action" so to speak. In October of 1915, Ford and FoMoCo's top mechanics sat down to work out how to adapt the model T to front-line combat. They quickly identified the T's strengths - its powerful motor, rigid frame, and versatile transmission - and its weaknesses: its shoddy craftsmanship, complexity, and convoluted user controls. Ford actually left most of the design work to his engineers, apparently preferring to sit back and allow them to do the tinkering while he focused on improving the passenger model. Led by the brilliant Henry Joy, (who had overseen the design of the model T's fuel and oil pumps) the design team set about making it a practical, affordable weapon of war; the prototype "Model TA" (the A standing for Armored), of which 6 were built. Although the original plans have not turned up yet (they are likely buried somewhere in the corporate archives at The Henry Ford, if they still exist), Joy's development notes and the sole surviving photograph give a good idea as to what the model TAs looked and functioned like. They had beefy offroad tires, a lowered suspension for smaller profile, and employed the same revolutionary spring steel alloy used in the Model T's bumper in their armor cladding (the thinking being that the spring steel would absorb the kinetic energy of small arms fire, allowing thinner armor plating and thus lower weight). The first three prototypes employed an unconventional, vacuum-operated turret mounting a water-cooled .303 Vickers Machine gun; a air compressor ran off the drivetrain when the engine was not under load, filling a pneumatic tank that could be used to power the turret traverse. The so-called "turreted" model had a crew of three: a driver, a gunner, and a mechanic/commander/loader. It seems in practice the turreted design was quite flawed: Henry Joy mentioned that in test runs in the hilly country surrounding the Ford plant, the constant load on the drivetrain left the turret's pneumatic tanks empty, rendering it inoperable, and the commander/loader/mechanic was far too taxed to perform any of his tasks with competence. For this reason, the later models switched to a turretless, open-topped design, sporting two pintle-mounted vickers guns; one operated by the mechanic, the other by the commander. This configuration proved to be far more successful, according to Joy's design notes, and it appears that the TA was projected to enter production in time for the spring offensives of 1916.

This was not to be, however; the TA was brought down by another of Henry's side projects, one with a far more sinister bent. It was around this time that Henry Ford's increasingly antisemitic attitudes were beginning to manifest in more and more noxious ways, and in early 1915 Henry announced that he intended to make his model T "100 Percent Hebrew-Free" as a newspaper dated to February 19, 1915 noted. The same article quotes Ford as saying that he was going to make the T "the finest automobile ever manufactured for the American people, barring those of the Israelite stock;" this meant the dissociation of the Ford Motor Company from any and all known Jewish Americans. Unfortunately for the model TA, this included the number-two designer on the TA project, Josef Ganz. According to a company memo, Ganz was inseparable from the project and when he was "let go" the TA was doomed; the plans were filed away in some dusty corner of the corporate archives (if they even survived), and the remaining designers were either demoted or transferred to remote departments. Only Henry Joy, it seems, appeared to have escaped unscathed; he was next assigned to the design of the '17 model T's four-wheel hydraulic brakes.

The surviving vehicles were used during WWII as plant security vehicles at various Ford factories, including the massive Willowsmith Plant that made B-19 bombers for the USAF; it is in this condition that the only extant photograph (or at least, the only one that has been found thus far in the massive archives of The Henry Ford) of the model TA appears.

EDIT: EVERYTHING YOU READ ABOVE IS A DAMN LIE