RAY: Anyway, here it is. The puzzler is about Henry Ford. He was falsely credited with inventing the automobile and it was also falsely credited with inventing mass production.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: I think Colt invented mass production. The guy of the Colt 45.

TOM: Don't get me started on that.

RAY: And the malt liquor. But he did do one thing that we know of, he created the famous Model T, of course. He always was said to be responsible for telling his customers the following: you can get the Model T in any color you want, as long as it's black.

TOM: Hmm.

RAY: Now, before people started e-mailing me, I did mention this.

TOM: You did mention that --

RAY: And I don't want any --

TOM: You know that black is not a color.

RAY: I don't want e-mails about having used it before and about the fact that black isn't the color.

TOM: We get enough mail that we don't need that kind of hate mail. We get enough hate mail.

RAY: The question very simply was why did Henry Ford choose black? Why not a nice lavender?

TOM: His brother-in-law was in the business. Did I give this answer already?

RAY: Yeah, I think so. No, he chose black not because it was the cheapest paint rather because it was the fastest drying paint. He wanted to make sure that the paint job didn't stay wet long enough to collect dust and whatever.

TOM: When you got --

RAY: Gizzip them off the assembly line.

TOM: Don't forget, at this time, the roller had not yet been invented. So, they were using nylon brushes to paint these --

RAY: Not nylon. Horse hair.

TOM: Horse hair. Nylon had not been invented yet either.

RAY: Exactly.

TOM: Of course.

RAY: It didn't come until World War II.

TOM: That's right.

RAY: Who's our winner this week?

TOM: OK. The winner is Eric Schultz from Al-bu-quirk-qway, New Mexico. And for having his correct answer chosen at random from among the millions or thousands or several answers, right answers that we got this week, Eric is going to get one of our enencumbered coffee mugs.

RAY: Now, I was reading the same thing that you just read and I came up with, he gets one of our uncucumbered coffee mugs. I like that better actually.

TOM: I like --

RAY: If you look at something closely, you know.

TOM: Uncucumbered.

RAY: Encucumbered.

TOM: That's fine.

RAY: Why not?

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]