The Model T was the most widely produced car in the world until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in the 1970s--roughly half a century after Ford stopped making its flivver. So it's by no mistake that it's the most exhaustively documented car in the world. In that sense both books are identical. Both offer considerable history on the events that transpired to create the T. Both discuss the milestones the car established over its 19-year history. Both also chart the changes that Ford's "changeless" car endured. And finally, they both reveal the ways that the cars impacted our lives.
There way each goes about it is different, though, and it shows in the delivery. Tom Collins, who wrote The Legendary Model T Ford, is a third-generation Model T enthusiast. Starting with his grandfather, who was born two years before production, his was a family that grew up with the Model T. Just as Ford's car introduced people to the motorcar, it introduced him to the industry. He's produced several titles regarding '50s cars, tractors, and the Model A for Krause Publications.
Lindsay Brooke, who wrote Ford Model T: The Car that Put the World on Wheels, is a Detroit-based automotive journalist with a quarter century worth of history in the publishing industry. He's the senior editor for Automotive Engineering International, the Society of Automotive Engineers' in-house publication. Prior to that, he served as editor for Automotive Industries magazine, the successor to The Horseless Age and The Automobile. Considering that The Horseless Age predates the T by a dozen years, you could say the path he's walked is long. This is his fourth title for Motorbooks.
Of the two books, Collins' is larger. Both measure 11 inches high, but his comes in at 11 inches wide (Brooke's title is roughly 9 1/2). Collins' weighs in with 300 pages; Brooke's, 208. So theoretically Collins' has the potential for more raw information.
But Brooke had the advantage of access to the Benson Ford Research Center. It's the mother lode of Ford information, including Henry's library and the Ford's corporate historical documents that the company donated to The Henry Ford museum in 1964. In fact, 150 photos in his book are scans of the contents in that collection.
That's not to say that Collins' reference material fell short. By way of historians (Keith Mathiowetz and Bruce McCalley among them), photographers (Bob Harrington, Doug Mitchel, and Don Voelker among them), and access to several archives, he's assembled an incredibly comprehensive volume of information and images.
Though the subject is the same, the audiences to which these books appeal is a bit different. Brooke appeals a little more to the cultural impact of the T rather than the car's technical elements. For example, he treats year-to-year changes as an uninterrupted block of 22 pages.
Collins, on the other hand, uses roughly 50 pages to treat year-by-year changes. He breaks down each year as its own subchapter with its own subheads, including Ford news, US history (for context), the specific changes for the particular year, and trivial information. Especially neat are the breakouts with body styles and their respective weights, prices, and production totals.
Brooke, on the other hand, seems to pay a little more deference to the way people interacted with Ford's T. He devotes 26 pages to stories of what life was like with the T. Interspersed among these tales are present-day stories of people who still surround themselves with Ts. Collins has a similar chapter, but with first-person observations.