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The Edsel was an automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company during the 1958, 1959, and 1960 model years. The Edsel never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly. Consequently, the Ford Motor Company lost millions of dollars on the Edsel's development, manufacture and marketing.

History[link]

Edsel Ranger interior, showing the Teletouch system and Rolling Dome speedometer.

In the early 1950s, the Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation that was no longer entirely owned by members of the Ford family. The company was now able to sell cars according to current market trends following the sellers' market of the postwar years. The new management compared the roster of Ford makes with that of General Motors, and concluded that Lincoln was competing not with Cadillac, but with Oldsmobile. Since Ford had surplus capital on hand from the success of the Ford Thunderbird, a plan was developed to move Lincoln upmarket, with the Continental broken out as a separate make at the top of Ford's product line, and to add another make to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln.

Research and development for the new intermediate line had begun in 1955 under the name "E car",^[1] which stood for "experimental car." Ford Motor Company eventually decided on the name "Edsel", in honor of Edsel B. Ford, son of the company's founder, Henry Ford (despite objections from Henry Ford II^[2]). This represented a new division of the firm alongside that of Ford itself and the Lincoln-Mercury division, whose cars at the time shared the same bodies.

The Edsel was introduced amid considerable publicity on "E Day"—September 4, 1957. It was also promoted by a top-rated television special, The Edsel Show, on October 13, but the promotional effort was not enough to counter the adverse initial public reaction to the car's styling and conventional build. For months, Ford had been circulating rumors that led people to expect an entirely new kind of car, when in reality, the Edsel shared its engineering and bodywork with other Ford models.

The Edsel was to be sold through a newly formed division of the Ford Motor Company, as a companion to the Ford Division, Mercury Division, Lincoln Division and (newly formed but also short-lived) Continental Division. Each division had its own retail organization and dealer network. The free-standing Edsel Division existed from November 1956 until January 1958, after which Edsel sales and marketing operations were integrated into the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division (referred to as M-E-L). Initially Edsel was sold through a new network of approximately 1,187 dealers. This briefly brought the total number of dealers of all Ford products to 10,000. Ford saw this as a way to come closer to parity with Chrysler, which had 10,000 dealers, and General Motors, which had 16,000. As soon as it became apparent that the Edsels were not selling, many of these dealers added Lincoln-Mercury, Ford of Britain, or Ford of Germany franchises to their dealerships with the encouragement of Ford Motor Company. Some dealers, however, closed.

For the 1958 model year, Edsel produced four models:^[3] The larger Mercury-based Citation and Corsair, and the smaller Ford-based Pacer and Ranger. The Citation was offered in two-door and four-door hardtop and two-door convertible versions. The Corsair was available in two-door and four-door hardtop versions. The Pacer was available as a two-door or four-door hardtop, four-door sedan, or two-door convertible. The Ranger was sold in two-door and four-door hardtop or sedan versions. The four-door Bermuda and Villager wagons and the two-door Roundup wagon were based on the 116″-wheelbase Ford station wagon platform and shared the trim and features of the Ranger and Pacer models.

The Edsel offered several innovative features, among which were its "rolling dome" speedometer, warning lights for such conditions as low oil level, parking brake engaged, and engine overheating,^[4] as well as its Push-button Teletouch transmission shifting system in the center of the steering wheel. Other Edsel design innovations included ergonomically designed controls for the driver and self-adjusting brakes (which Edsel claimed as a first for the industry, even though Studebaker had pioneered them earlier in the decade). The Edsel also offered such advanced safety features as seat belts (which were available at extra cost as optional equipment on many other makes) and child-proof rear door locks that could only be opened with the key.^[5]

Unlike Ford and Mercury, the Edsel Division never had any dedicated manufacturing plants. All Edsels were built in Ford or Mercury plants on a contract basis.

In the first year, 63,110 Edsels were sold in the United States; an additional 4,935 units were sold in Canada. Though below expectations, this nevertheless represented the second-largest launch for any new car brand to date, exceeded only by the Plymouth introduction in 1928.

For the 1959 model year, Edsel fielded only two series, the Ford-based Ranger and Corsair. The larger Mercury-based Edsels were discontinued. Replacing the Pacer as the top-line Ford-based Edsel, the new Corsair was offered as a two-door and four-door hardtop, four-door sedan, and two-door convertible. The Ranger was sold as a two-door and four-door hardtop, two-door and four-door sedan, and the Villager station wagon. In the 1959 model year, 44,891 Edsels were sold in the U.S. An additional 2,505 units were sold in Canada.

For the 1960 model year, Edsel's last, only 2,846 vehicles were produced. All but the pilot cars were assembled at the Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant. The marque was reduced to the Ranger series of sedans, hardtops, and convertibles and the Villager station wagons. The Edsel shared a basic chassis, glass, and major sheet metal with the 1960 Ford Galaxie and Fairlane models that were built on the Louisville assembly line with it. But the Edsel had its own unique grille, hood, and four upright oblong taillights, along with its side sweep spears. The Edsel's front and rear bumpers were also unique. The Edsel also rode on a longer wheelbase than the concurrent Ford and used a different rear suspension. The cars did, however, share engines and transmissions.

The 1960 Edsel Ranger four-door hardtop model used the thin-pillar Ford Fairlane four-door sedan roofline, as opposed to the "square" roofline used on the corresponding Ford four-door hardtop, which was exclusive to the Galaxie line. The Galaxie four-door hardtop's rear door trim panel, however, was fitted to the Ranger. This gave the Edsel four-door hardtop a unique body style that was never offered on any 1960 Ford.

End of the Edsel[link]

Ford announced the end of the Edsel program on Thursday, November 19, 1959. However, production continued until late in November, with the final tally at 2,846 1960 models. Total sales were approximately 84,000, less than half the company's projected break-even point. The company lost $350 million ($2.45 billion in 2009 values) on the venture.^[6] Only 118,287 Edsels were built, including 7,440 produced in Ontario, Canada. By Detroit standards, these production figures were dismal, particularly when spread across a run of three model years.

On Friday, November 20, United Press International's (UPI) wire service reported that book values for used Edsels had decreased by as much as $400 (approximately $2,800 in 2006 values) based on condition and age immediately following the Ford press release. In some newspaper markets, dealers scrambled to renegotiate newspaper advertising contracts involving the 1960 Edsel models, while others dropped the name from their dealerships' advertising "slugs." Ford issued a statement that it would distribute coupons to customers who purchased 1960 models (and carryover 1959 models) prior to the announcement, valued at $300 to $400 toward the purchase of new Ford products to offset the decreased values. The company also issued credits to dealers for stock unsold or received following the announcement.

Edsel and its failures[link]

Historians have advanced several theories in an effort to explain the Edsel's failure. Popular culture often faults the car’s styling. Consumer Reports has alleged that poor workmanship was the Edsel's chief problem. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of the corporate culture’s failure to understand American consumers. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was "the wrong car at the wrong time."

"The aim was right, but the target moved"[link]

One popular misconception is that the Edsel was an engineering failure, or a lemon, even though it shared the basic technology and overall reliability of the concurrent Mercury and Ford models that were built in the same factories.^{[citation needed]} The Edsel is most famous for being a marketing disaster. Indeed, the name "Edsel" became synonymous with commercial failure, and similar ill-fated products have often been colloquially referred to as "Edsels". Since the Edsel program was such a debacle, it gave marketers a vivid illustration of how not to market a product. The principal reason the Edsel's failure is so famous is that it failed despite Ford’s investment of $400,000,000 in its development.

The prerelease advertising campaign touted the car as having "more YOU ideas", and the teaser advertisements in magazines only revealed glimpses of the car through a highly blurred lens or wrapped in paper or under tarps. Edsels were shipped to the dealerships undercover and remained wrapped on the dealer lots.

The public also had difficulty understanding what the Edsel was, primarily because Ford made the mistake of pricing the Edsel within Mercury’s market price segment. Theoretically, the Edsel was conceived to fit into Ford’s marketing plans as the brand slotted in between Ford and Mercury. However, when the car debuted in 1958, its least expensive model—the Ranger—was priced within $73 of the most expensive and best-trimmed Ford sedan and $63 less than Mercury’s base Medalist model. In its mid-range pricing, Edsel's Pacer and Corsair models were more expensive than their Mercury counterparts. Edsel's top-of-the-line Citation four-door hardtop model was the only model priced to correctly compete with Mercury’s mid-range Montclair Turnpike Cruiser model, as illustrated in the chart below.

Not only was the Edsel competing against its own sister divisions, but model for model, buyers did not understand what the car was supposed to be—a step above the Mercury, or a step below it.

After its introduction to the public, the Edsel did not live up to its preproduction publicity, even though it did offer many new features, such as self-adjusting rear brakes and automatic lubrication. While consumer focus groups had indicated that these and other features would make the "E" car attractive to them as car buyers, the Edsel's selling prices exceeded what buyers were willing to pay. Upon seeing the price for a base model, many potential buyers simply left the dealerships. Other buyers were frightened by the price for a fully equipped top-of-the-line model.

The wrong car at the wrong time[link]

One of the external forces working against the Edsel was the onset of an economic recession in late 1957.^[2][3]

Compounding Edsel's problems was the fact that the car had to compete with well-established nameplates from the Big Three, such as Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Dodge and DeSoto, as well as with its own internal sister division Mercury, which itself had never been a stellar sales success. To make matters still worse, as a new make, Edsel had established no brand loyalty with buyers, as its competing makes had.

Even if the 1957–1958 recession had not occurred, the Edsel would have been entering a shrinking marketplace. In the early 1950s, when the "E" car was in its earliest stages of development, Ford Executive Vice President Ernest R. Breech had successfully convinced Ford management that the medium-priced market segment offered great untapped opportunity. At the time, Breech's assessment was basically correct; in 1955, Pontiac, Buick and Dodge had sold a combined two million units.^[7] But by the fall of 1957, when the Edsel was introduced, the market had changed drastically. Independent manufacturers in the medium-priced field were drifting toward insolvency. Hoping to reverse its losses, Packard acquired Studebaker, which was also in financial difficulty. The board decided to stop production under the venerable Packard badge after 1958. The 1957-58 Packards were little more than Studebakers badged as Packards. Attempting to capitalize on the emerging consumer interest in economy cars, American Motors shifted its focus to its compact Rambler models and discontinued its pre-merger brands, Nash and Hudson, after the 1957 model year. Even Chrysler saw sales of its DeSoto marque drop dramatically from its 1957 high by over 50% in 1958. When DeSoto sales failed to rebound during the 1959 model year, plans were made in Highland Park to discontinue the nameplate during its 1961 model year run.

Indeed, sales for all car manufacturers, even those not introducing new models, were down. Consumers started buying more fuel-efficient automobiles, particularly Volkswagen Beetles, which were selling at rates exceeding 50,000 a year^[8] in the U.S. from 1957 onward. Edsels were equipped with powerful engines and offered brisk acceleration, but they also required premium fuel, and their fuel economy, especially in city driving, was poor even by late-1950s standards.

Ford Motor Company had conducted the right marketing study, but it came up with the wrong product to fill the gap between Ford and Mercury. By 1958, consumers had become fascinated with economy cars, and a large car like the Edsel was seen as too expensive to buy and own. When Ford introduced the Falcon in 1960, it sold over 400,000 units in its first year. In a little-noted irony, Ford's investment in expanded plant capacity and additional tooling for the Edsel helped make the company's subsequent success with the Falcon possible.^[9]

By 1965, the market for medium-priced cars had recovered, and this time, Ford had the right car: The Galaxie 500 LTD. The LTD's success led Chevrolet to introduce the Caprice as a mid-1965 upscale trim option on its top-of-the-line Impala four-door hardtop.

Edsel, a difficult name to place[link]

The name of the car, Edsel, is also often cited as a further reason for its lack of popularity. Naming the vehicle after Edsel Ford was proposed early in its development. However, the Ford family strongly opposed its use. Henry Ford II declared that he didn't want his father's good name spinning around on thousands of hubcaps. Ford also ran internal studies to decide on a name, and even dispatched employees to stand outside movie theaters to poll audiences as to what their feelings were on several ideas. They reached no conclusions.

Ford retained the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding to come up with a name. However, when the advertising agency issued its report, citing over 6,000 possibilities, Ford's Ernest Breech commented that they had been hired to develop a name, not 6,000. Early favorites for the name brand included Citation, Corsair, Pacer, and Ranger, which were ultimately chosen for the vehicle's series names.

David Wallace, manager of marketing research, and coworker Bob Young unofficially invited freethinker poet Marianne Moore for input and suggestions. Moore's unorthodox contributions (among them "Utopian Turtletop", "Pastelogram", "Turcotinga" and "Mongoose Civique") were meant to stir creative thought and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature.^[7]

At the behest of Ernest Breech, who was chairing a board meeting in the absence of Henry Ford II, the car was finally called "Edsel" in honor of Edsel Ford, former company president and son of Henry Ford.

Reliability[link]

Reports of mechanical flaws in the models originating in the factory surfaced, due to lack of quality control and confusion of parts with other Ford models. The first-year (1958) Edsels were assembled in both Mercury and Ford factories. The longer-wheelbase models, Citation and Corsair, were produced alongside the Mercury products, while the shorter-wheelbase models, Pacer and Ranger, were produced alongside the Ford products. There was never a stand-alone factory dedicated solely to Edsel model production. Workers assembling Fords and Mercurys literally had to change parts bins and tools to assemble extra Edsels once they had assembled their hourly quota of regular Fords and Mercurys. Consequently, the desired quality control of the different Edsel models proved difficult to achieve. In fact, many Edsels actually left the assembly lines unfinished. Uninstalled parts were placed in the trunks along with installation instructions for dealership mechanics, some of whom never installed the additional parts at all. Some dealers did not even receive all the parts.^[2]

Design controversies[link]

The distinctive grille of the Edsel

The Edsel is best remembered for its trademark "horsecollar" or toilet seat grille, which was quite distinct from other cars of the period. According to a popular joke at the time, the Edsel "resembled an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".^[10] Some have speculated that the car failed to sell because its grille resembled a vulva.^[11]

The Edsel's front-end ensemble as it eventually appeared bore little resemblance, if any, to the original concept. Roy Brown, the original chief designer on the Edsel project, had envisioned a slender, almost delicate opening in the center. Engineers, fearing engine cooling problems, vetoed the intended design, which led to the now-infamous "horsecollar."

The vertical grille theme, while improved for the 1959 models, was discontinued for the 1960 models, which were similar to Ford models of the same year, although coincidentally, the new front-end design bore no small resemblance to that of the 1959 Pontiac.

The Teletouch pushbutton automatic transmission selector proved problematic, in part because the steering wheel hub, where the pushbuttons were located, was the traditional location of the horn button. Drivers often ended up shifting gears instead of sounding the horn. While the Edsel was fast, the location of the transmission pushbuttons was not conducive to street racing. There were also jokes among stoplight drag racers about the buttons: D for Drag, L for Leap, and R for Race (instead of Drive, Low and Reverse).

Complaints also surfaced about the taillights on 1958-model Edsel station wagons. The lenses were boomerang-shaped and placed in a reverse fashion. At a distance, they appeared as arrows pointed in the opposite direction of the turn being made. While the left turn signal blinked, its arrow shape pointed right, and vice versa. However, there was little that could be done to give the Ford-based station wagons a unique appearance from the rear; corporate management insisted that no sheetmetal could be changed. Only the taillights and trim could be touched. There was room for separate turn signals in addition to the boomerangs, but the U.S. industry had never supplied them up to that point, and they were probably never seriously considered.

Mechanics of the time were wary of the 410-cubic-inch Edsel "E-475" engine because its perfectly-flat cylinder heads lacked distinct combustion chambers. The heads were set at an angle, with "roof" pistons forming both a squish zone on one side and a combustion chamber on the other. Combustion thus took place entirely within the cylinder bore. This design was similar to Chevrolet's 348-cubic-inch "W" engine, which was also introduced in 1958. While the design reduced the cost of manufacture and may also have helped minimize carbon buildup, it was also unfamiliar to many mechanics.

Company politics and the role of Robert McNamara[link]

The most intriguing aspect of the Edsel story may be that it provides a case study in how company politics can kill an idea. While the car and Ford’s planning of the car are the most often cited reasons for its failure, internal Ford Motor Company memoranda indicate that the Edsel may actually have been a victim of dissension within Ford's management ranks.

Following World War II, Henry Ford II retained Robert McNamara as one of the "Whiz Kids" to help turn Ford around. McNamara’s cost-cutting and cost-containment skills helped Ford emerge from its near-collapse after the war. As a result, McNamara eventually amassed a considerable amount of power at Ford. McNamara was very much a throwback to Henry Ford in that, like the elder Ford, McNamara was committed to Ford to the almost total exclusion of the company's other products. Thus, McNamara had little use for the Continental, Lincoln, Mercury and Edsel brand cars made by the company.

McNamara opposed the formation of the separate divisions for Continental, Lincoln, Mercury, and Edsel cars, and moved to consolidate Lincoln, Mercury, and Edsel into the M-E-L division. McNamara saw to it that the Continental program was canceled and that the model was merged into the Lincoln range for 1958. He next set his sights on Edsel by maneuvering for elimination of the dual wheelbases and separate bodies used in 1958. Instead, the Edsel would share the Ford platform and use Ford’s inner body structure for 1959. In 1960, the Edsel emerged as little more than a Ford with different trim. McNamara also moved to reduce Edsel’s advertising budget for 1959, and for 1960, he virtually eliminated it. The final blow came in the fall of 1959, when McNamara convinced Henry Ford II and the rest of Ford's management structure that the Edsel was doomed and that it was time to end production before the Edsel bled the company dry. McNamara also attempted to discontinue the Lincoln nameplate, but that effort ended with Elwood Engel's now classic redesign of 1961. McNamara left Ford when he was named Secretary of Defense by President John F. Kennedy.

During the 1964 presidential election, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater blamed McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, for the Edsel's failure. Eventually, Ford's former executive vice president Ernest R. Breech, who was a financial contributor to Goldwater, wrote the Senator's campaign, explaining that "Mr. McNamara… had nothing to do with the plans for the Edsel car or any part of the program." However, the charge continued to be leveled against McNamara for years. During his time as head of the World Bank, McNamara instructed his public affairs officer to distribute copies of Breech's letter to the press whenever the accusation was made.^[12]

The Edsel Comet[link]

The scheduled 1960 Edsel Comet compact car was hastily rebranded as the Comet and assigned to Lincoln-Mercury dealerships as a stand-alone product. Based on the new-for-1960 Ford Falcon, the Comet was an instant success, selling more cars in its first year than all models of Edsel produced during that marque's entire three-year run. Styling touches seen in the Comets sold to the public that allude to being part of the Edsel family of models included the instrument cluster, rear tailfins (though canted diagonally), and the taillight shape (the lens is visually similar to that used on the 1960 Edsel, and even retained the embossed "E" code). The Comet's keys were even shaped like Edsel keys, with the center bar removed from the "E" to form a "C."

For 1962, Ford officially assigned the Comet to the Mercury brand. The Mercury name does not appear anywhere on the 1960 and 1961 models.

Motorsports[link]

Despite its failure, the Edsel did see some action in the Grand National Stock Car series.

Today[link]

More than half a century after its spectacular failure, the Edsel has become a highly collectible item among vintage car hobbyists. Fewer than 10,000 Edsels survive and are considered valuable collectors’ items. A mint 1958 Citation convertible or 1960 Ranger convertible may sell for over $100,000.^[13]

While the design was considered "ugly" fifty years ago, many other car manufacturers (such as Pontiac, Jaguar Cars, BMW, Subaru, Lancia and Alfa Romeo) have employed similar vertical grilles successfully in their car designs. Many of the Edsel's features, such as transmission lock on ignition, self-adjusting brakes, gear selection by steering wheel buttons, etc., which were considered "too impractical" in the late 1950s, are now standard features of sports cars.

Even if the Edsel had survived beyond the early 1960s, it is far from certain that the brand would still be in production today. Chrysler discontinued the DeSoto brand at almost exactly the same time, Chrysler's announcement of the DeSoto's discontinuation coming only nine days after Ford's announcement of the Edsel's discontinuation. While the market for medium-priced cars would recover for a time, they would eventually be squeezed out due to Ford and Chevrolet having vehicles moving up into the medium-priced segment. Meanwhile, Dodge would move down into the low-priced field, which had traditionally been occupied by Plymouth. Although Oldsmobile was discontinued in 2004 in an unrelated move, the final death knell for the traditional domestic medium-priced brands was the Automotive industry crisis of 2008–2010. As a result of this crisis, General Motors and Chrysler filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. This development saw the end of the Pontiac and Saturn brands by GM, while Ford's own Mercury division was discontinued despite Ford being relatively healthy compared to GM and Chrysler and not needing government assistance. By the 2011 model year, only Dodge and Buick among the traditional medium-priced makes had remained in production, with Dodge having taken Plymouth's old spot within Chrysler and Buick arguably surviving only due to the brand's success in China.^[14]

During the early-to-mid 2000s, Mazda and Volvo, which were part of the Ford group at that time, appealed to the demographics the Edsel had targeted in the late 1950s (young professionals on the way up, and those who had "arrived"); while the Mercury Grand Marquis was a solid seller to the Edsel's actual target cohort (those who had actually been young professionals on the way up in the late 1950s). By the end of the decade, Ford had sold its interest in Mazda and Volvo and announced the end of production for its Panther rear-wheel drive models.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Deutsch, Jan (1976). The Edsel and Corporate Responsibility. Yale University Press. 
• Dicke, Tom. "The Edsel: Forty Years as a Symbol of Failure," Journal of Popular Culture, June 2010, Vol. 43 Issue 3, pp 486–502
• Wallace, David (Second Quarter 1975). "Naming the Edsel". Automotive Quarterly Magazine XIII (2): 182–191. 
• Barron, James (2007-08-01). "To Ford, a Disaster. To Edsel Owners, Love.". The New York Times. 
• The Auto Editors of Consumer Guide (2006). Encyclopedia of American Cars: A Comprehensive History of the American Automakers From 1930 to Today. Publications International, Ltd.. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Edsel vehicles (category)

• Edsel.com History, specifications, resources for owners.
• Smith Motor Company Virtual Edsel Dealer
• The International Edsel Club
  • Famous Ford Flops
• Edsels in the Media Listing of Edsel references in popular culture.
• Edsel Promo Time A Web site devoted to plastic dealer promotional models of Edsels.
• Washington Post article about the Edsel
• The Edsel Tinsmith A catalog of tin toy Edsels that were manufactured in Japan
• "All About Ford's Luxury Loaded Edsel." Popular Science, September 1957, pp. 98-103/282-283.

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Henry Ford II arrives in the Netherlands (1954).

Henry Ford II (September 4, 1917 — September 29, 1987), commonly known as "HF2" and "Hank the Deuce", was the oldest son of Edsel Ford and oldest grandson of Henry Ford. He was president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) from 1960 to 1979,^[1] and chairman for several months thereafter.

Early life[link]

Henry Ford II was born in Detroit, Michigan to Eleanor Clay Ford and Edsel Ford on September 4, 1917. He and his brothers, Benson and William, grew up amid affluence, but their father tried to make sure that they understood the meaning of work and money. He attended the Hotchkiss School.

Career[link]

When his father Edsel, the president of Ford, died of cancer in May 1943 (during World War II),^[2] Henry Ford II was serving in the navy, and was thus unable to take over the presidency of the family-owned business. The elderly and ailing Henry Ford, company founder, decided to assume the presidency. By this point in his life, he was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such a job; most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years, although he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had de facto control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this moment was not different. The directors elected him,^[3] and he served until the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing over $10 million a month. The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production, but the idea never progressed to execution.

Henry Ford II left the Navy in July 1943 and joined the company's management a few weeks later. After 2 years, he took over the presidency of the company on September 21, 1945. Since it had been assumed that Edsel Ford would continue in his capacity as president of the company for much longer than turned out to actually be the case, Henry Ford II had received little grooming for the position, and he took over the company during a chaotic period; its European factories had suffered a great deal of damage during the war, and domestic sales were also in decline.

Henry Ford II immediately adopted an aggressive management style. One of his first acts as company president was to fire Harry Bennett, head of the Ford Service Department, who had originally been hired by Henry Ford to stifle attempts at unionization. Next, acknowledging his inexperience, he hired several seasoned executives to support him. He hired former General Motors executives Ernest Breech and Lewis Crusoe away from the Bendix Corporation. Breech was to serve in the coming years as HF2's business mentor, and the Breech–Crusoe team would form the core of Ford's business expertise, offering much-needed experience.

Additionally, HF2 hired ten young up-and-comers, known as the "Whiz Kids". These ten, gleaned from an Army Air Forces statistical team, HF2 envisioned as giving the company the ability to innovate and stay current with the times. Two of them, Arjay Miller and Robert McNamara, would go on to serve as president of Ford themselves. A third member, J. Edward Lundy, served in key financial roles for several decades and helped to establish Ford Finance's reputation as one of the best Finance organizations in the world. As a team, the "whiz kids" are probably best remembered as the design team for the 1949 Ford, which they took from concept to production in nineteen months, and which re-established Ford as a formidable automotive company. It was reported that 100,000 orders for this car were taken the day it was introduced to the market.

Henry Ford II was president of Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960. The company became a publicly traded corporation under his leadership in 1956. When he resigned the presidency, he became CEO of the company. On July 13, 1960 he was additionally elected Chairman; he resigned as CEO on October 1, 1979, and as Chairman in 1980. His nephew, William Clay Ford, Jr. would later assume these positions after 20 years of non-Ford family management of the company. During the interim, the family interests were represented on the board by Henry's younger brother William Clay Ford, Sr., as well as his son Edsel Ford II and his nephew William Clay Ford, Jr.

Upon the release of the CVCC engine by Honda Motor Company, Ford's then-President Lee Iacocca was highly interested in adopting the new engine in a small Ford vehicle, possibly the Pinto or Fiesta- perhaps even going as far to sell the Honda Civic as a Ford. The plan was scuttled by Henry Ford II, who stated: "No car with my name on the hood is going to have a Jap engine inside," although the Ford Motor Company had been selling a Mazda truck as the Ford Courier since late 1971 and HF2 personally signed off on every new car—while the CVCC wasn't tested by the EPA until October 1972. This bit of anger was perhaps understandable for a man who had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, but the Ford Motor Company did go on to adapt to the era in which Japanese, German, and American participation in a globalized automobile industry became tightly integrated. For example, Ford's relationship with Mazda was well developed even before the end of HF2's period of influence.

HF2's management style caused the company's fortunes to fluctuate in more ways than one. For example, his offering of public stock in 1956 raised 650 million USD for the company, but the "experimental car" program instituted during his tenure, the Edsel, lost the company almost half that. Likewise, HF2 hired the creative Lee Iacocca, who was fundamental to the success of the Ford Mustang, in 1964, but fired Iacocca due to personal disputes in 1978 (about the break in their relationship, HF2 was famously quoted as saying, "Sometimes you just don't like somebody"). Nevertheless, Henry Ford II's overall influence on the company was substantial. By the time he retired as Chairman in 1980, Ford Motor Company was the fourth-largest industrial corporation in the world. He formally retired from all positions at Ford Motor Company on October 1, 1982, upon reaching the company's mandatory retirement age of 65, but remained the ultimate source of authority at Ford until his death in 1987.

Awards and achievements[link]

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson in 1969.

Ford was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1996.

Personal life[link]

Henry Ford II was married three times:

• Anne McDonnell (1920—1996), a daughter of James F. McDonnell. They married in 1940 and divorced in 1964 (she married Deane F. Johnson in 1968). The Fords had three children: Charlotte, Anne, and Edsel Ford II[1]
• Maria Cristina Vettore (born 1926), formerly wife of Lt. William Austin, a British naval officer; married 1965, divorced 1980
• Kathleen DuRoss (born 1949), widow of David DuRoss (died 1968); she and Ford were married in Carson City, Nevada, 1980. By this marriage Ford had two stepdaughters, Deborah Guibord and Kimberly DuRoss.

He died of pneumonia in Detroit at Henry Ford Hospital on September 29, 1987, at the age of 70.

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Henry Ford II

• Ford Family Tree
• Henry Ford II High School

Notes[link]

References[link]

• SourceWatch
• Sorensen, Charles E.; with Williamson, Samuel T. (1956), My Forty Years with Ford, New York, New York, USA: Norton, LCCN 56010854 . Various republications, including ISBN 9780814332795.

External links[link]

• Henry Ford II at Find a Grave
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Henry II Ford (SIC)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

Henry Ford
Henry Ford, c. 1919
Born	(1863-07-30)July 30, 1863 Greenfield Township, Michigan, U.S.
Died	April 7, 1947(1947-04-07) (aged 83) Fair Lane, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Business, Engineering
Net worth	$188.1 billion, based on information from Forbes, February 2008.
Religion	Protestant Episcopal
Spouse	Clara Jane Bryant
Children	Edsel Ford
Parents	William Ford and Mary Ford
Signature

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. Ford spent most of his life making headlines, good, bad, but never indifferent. Celebrated as both a technological genius and a folk hero, Ford was the creative force behind an industry of unprecedented size and wealth that in only a few decades permanently changed the economic and social character of the United States. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently.

Ford was also widely known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I and for being the publisher of antisemitic texts such as the book The International Jew.^[1]

Early years[link]

Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Greenfield Township (near Detroit, Michigan).^[2] His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, of a family originally from western England, who were among migrants to Ireland as the English created plantations.^{[citation needed]} His mother, Mary Litogot Ford (1839–1876), was born in Michigan; she was the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when Mary was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's siblings include Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934).

His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. At 15, Ford dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman.^[3] At twenty, Ford walked four miles to their Episcopal church every Sunday.^[4]

Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to eventually take over the family farm, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, "I never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."^[5]

In 1879, he left home to work as an apprentice machinist in the city of Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse company to service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit.^[6]

Henry Ford in 1888, aged 25.

Marriage and family[link]

Ford married Clara Ala Bryant (1866–1950) in 1888 and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill.^[7] They had one child: Edsel Ford (1893–1943).^[8]

Career[link]

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test-drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.^[9]

Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Ford's automobile experimentation. Encouraged by Edison, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898.^[10] Backed by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from the Edison Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899.^[11] However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford wanted. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.^[11]

With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-horsepower automobile in October 1901. With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in the Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer.^[12] In 1902, Murphy brought in Henry M. Leland as a consultant; Ford, in response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford gone, Murphy renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.^[12]

Teaming up with former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer "999" which Barney Oldfield was to drive to victory in a race in October 1902. Ford received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer.^[12] They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson, Ltd." to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts.^[12] Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment.

Ford Motor Company[link]

Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.

In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the new company.^[13] Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903,^[13] with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray, Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomson's lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Ford then demonstrated a newly-designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour (147.0 km/h). Convinced by this success, the race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of the fastest locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.

Model T[link]

The Model T was introduced on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. The car was very simple to drive, and easy and cheap to repair. It was so cheap at $825 in 1908 ($21,340 today) (the price fell every year) that by the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T.^[14]

Ford created a massive publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in virtually every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but the very concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and to encourage exploring the countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked on the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed—several years posted 100% gains on the previous year. Always on the hunt for more efficiency and lower costs, in 1913 Ford introduced the moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and its development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles E. Sorensen, and C. Harold Wills.^[15] (See Piquette Plant)

Ford Assembly Line, 1913

Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.^[16] (Using the consumer price index, this price was equivalent to $7,020 in 2008 dollars.)

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model T's. However, it was a monolithic black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black".^[17] Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because of its quicker drying time, Model T's were available in other colors, including red. The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford, and production continued as late as 1927; the final total production was 15,007,034. This record stood for the next 45 years. This record was achieved in just 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T (1908).

President Woodrow Wilson asked Ford to run as a Democrat for the United States Senate from Michigan in 1918. Although the nation was at war, Ford ran as a peace candidate and a strong supporter of the proposed League of Nations.^[18]

Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry, however, retained final decision authority and sometimes reversed his son. Henry started another company, Henry Ford and Son, and made a show of taking himself and his best employees to the new company; the goal was to scare the remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to sell their stakes to him before they lost most of their value. (He was determined to have full control over strategic decisions.) The ruse worked, and Henry and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company.^[19]

By the mid-1920s, sales of the Model T began to decline due to rising competition. Other auto makers offered payment plans through which consumers could buy their cars, which usually included more modern mechanical features and styling not available with the Model T. Despite urgings from Edsel, Henry steadfastly refused to incorporate new features into the Model T or to form a customer credit plan.^[20]

Model A and Ford's later career[link]

By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Henry to make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of technical expertise in design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.^[21]

The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than 4 million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted an annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered by its competitor General Motors (and still in use by automakers today). Not until the 1930s did Ford overcome his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation.^[22]

Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration.

Labor philosophy[link]

The five-dollar workday[link]

Time Magazine, January 14, 1935.

Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.^[23]

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.^[24] A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression."^[25] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.^[26][27] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,^[28] while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.^[29] (Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later it was changed to a day off.)

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.^[30] Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the policy as profit-sharing rather than wages.^[31] It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5 day.^[32]

The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and what might today be called "deadbeat dads". The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."^[33]

Labor unions[link]

Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work.^[34] He thought they were too heavily influenced by some leaders who, despite their ostensible good motives, would end up doing more harm than good for workers. Most wanted to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment, but Ford saw this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary for any economic prosperity to exist.

He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would nevertheless stimulate the larger economy and thus grow new jobs elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in others. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crisis as a way to maintain their own power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to do right by their workers, because doing so would maximize their own profits. (Ford did acknowledge, however, that many managers were basically too bad at managing to understand this fact.) But Ford believed that eventually, if good managers such as he could fend off the attacks of misguided people from both left and right (i.e., both socialists and bad-manager reactionaries), the good managers would create a socio-economic system wherein neither bad management nor bad unions could find enough support to continue existing.

To forestall union activity, Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to head the Service Department. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to squash union organizing.^[35] The most famous incident, on May 26, 1937, involved Bennett's security men beating with clubs UAW representatives, including Walter Reuther.^[36] While the Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on the scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett’s Service Department, and [Brooks] "did not give orders to intervene."^[37] The incident became known as The Battle of the Overpass.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel (who was president of the company) thought Ford had to come to some sort of collective bargaining agreement with the unions because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But Henry (who still had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis even if not an official one) refused to cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge of talking to the unions that were trying to organize the Ford Motor Company. Sorensen's memoir^[38] makes clear that Henry's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached.

The Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the United Auto Workers union (UAW). A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted that a distraught Henry Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather than cooperate but that his wife Clara told him she would leave him if he destroyed the family business. She wanted to see their son and grandsons lead it into the future.^[39] Henry complied with his wife's ultimatum. Overnight, the Ford Motor Co. went from the most stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW contract terms.^{[citation needed]} The contract was signed in June 1941.

Ford Airplane Company[link]

Ford, like other automobile companies, entered the aviation business during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company.

Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) of the Spanish Republican Airline, L.A.P.E.

Ford's most successful aircraft was the Ford 4AT Trimotor, often called the "Tin Goose" because of its corrugated metal construction. It used a new alloy called Alclad that combined the corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of duralumin. The plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII-3m, and some say that Ford's engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then copied it. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the U.S. Army. Ford has been honored by the Smithsonian Institution for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.

Willow Run[link]

Peace and war[link]

World War I era[link]

Ford opposed war, which he thought was a terrible waste.^[40][41] Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a peace ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He and about 170 other prominent peace leaders traveled there. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.^[42]

Ford plants in Britain produced tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and aircraft engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917 the company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for airplanes, and anti-submarine boats.^[43]

In 1918, with the war on and the League of Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 4,500 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide.^[44]

The coming of World War II and Ford's mental collapse[link]

Ford had opposed America's entry into World War II ^[36][45] and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction"; in 1939 he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.^[46] The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War (see the section on his anti-Semitism below).^[47][36] In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. However, Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel.^[36] Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.^[36] At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the War and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford-Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company. The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace made it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers.

When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an alternative source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in late 1941."^[48] His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic. Once the U.S. entered the war, Ford's Willow Run plant was converted into a B-24 factory. Production, however, was marred by incompetence and bungling.^[36]

Following a series of strokes in the late 1930s he became increasingly debilitated and was more of a figurehead; other people made the decisions in his name.^[49] After Edsel Ford's premature death, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company in 1943, but his mental ability was fading. In reality the company was controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford, and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied, and enforced discipline, on employees. As Ford became increasingly sidelined, he grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received; Ford forced Sorensen out in 1944.^[50] Henry Ford II (Ford's grandson), in a purge of the old guard, forced out Bennett in 1947. Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat or by instigating some sort of coup among executives and directors.^[51] Nothing happened until 1945, with bankruptcy a serious risk. Edsel's widow led an ouster and installed her son, Henry Ford II, as president; the young man took full control.^[52][53]

[edit] The Dearborn Independent and anti-Semitism

The Ford publication The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. Articles from The Dearborn Independent, 1920

Ford in the early 1920s sponsored a weekly newspaper that published (among many non-controversial articles) strongly anti-Semitic views. At the same time Ford had a reputation as one of the few major corporations actively hiring black workers; he was not accused of discrimination against Jewish workers or suppliers.^[54]

In 1918, Ford's closest aide and private secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, purchased an obscure weekly newspaper for Ford, The Dearborn Independent. The Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927, during which Liebold was editor. Every Ford franchise nation-wide had to carry the paper and distribute it to its customers.

The newspaper published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was discredited by The Times of London as a forgery during the Independent's publishing run. The American Jewish Historical Society described the ideas presented in the magazine as "anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic." In February 1921, the New York World published an interview with Ford, in which he said: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on." During this period, Ford emerged as "a respected spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice," reaching around 700,000 readers through his newspaper.^[55] The 2010 documentary film Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story (written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow) noted that Ford wrote on May 22, 1920: “If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew.”^{[56][57][58][59][60][61]}

In Germany, Ford's anti-Semitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several anti-Semitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters."^[62] Ford is the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf.^[63][64] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his "inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping Ford's life-size portrait next to his desk.^[65] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany," and modeling the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the Model T.^[66]

Grand Cross of the German Eagle, an award bestowed on Ford by Nazi Germany

On February 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Hitler, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Wagner (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused.^[67]

While Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews (Volume 4, Chapter 80), but blamed the Jews for provoking incidents of mass violence.^[68] None of this work was written by Ford, but he allowed his name to be used as author. According to trial testimony, he wrote almost nothing. Friends and business associates have said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles. (He claimed he only read the headlines.)^[69] However, court testimony in a libel suit, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did know about the contents of the Independent in advance of publication.^[36]

The libel lawsuit, which was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to anti-Semitic remarks, led Ford to close the Independent in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page," William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval.^[70] Investigative journalist Max Wallace noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro."^[71]

Michael Barkun observed,

That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that 'I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval.'^[72]

According to Spencer Blakeslee,

The ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their anti-Semitic campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, ADL.^[73]

Wallace also found that Ford's apology was likely, at least partly, motivated by a business that was slumping as result of his anti-Semitism repelling potential buyers of Ford cars.^[36] Up until the apology, a considerable number of dealers, who had been required to make sure that buyers of Ford cars received the Independent, bought up and destroyed copies of the newspaper rather than alienate customers.^[36]

Ford's 1927 apology was well received. "Four-Fifths of the hundreds of letters addressed to Ford in July 1927 were from Jews, and almost without exception they praised the Industrialist."^[74] In January 1937, a Ford statement to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as the International Jew."^[74]

In July 1938, prior to the outbreak of war, the German consul at Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.^[65] James D. Mooney, vice-president of overseas operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross of the German Eagle, First Class.^[65][75]

Distribution of International Jew was halted in 1942 through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of copyright.^[74] It is still banned in Germany. Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites.

One Jewish public figure who was said to have been friendly with Ford was Detroit Judge Harry Keidan. When asked about this connection, Ford replied that Keidan was only half-Jewish.^{[citation needed]} A close collaborator of Ford during World War II reported that Ford, at the time over 80 years old, was shown a movie of the Nazi concentration camps and was horrified by the atrocities documented in it.^[76]

The damage, however, had been done. Testifying at Nuremberg, convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as military governor of Vienna deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated,

The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was [...] that book by Henry Ford, "The International Jew." I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy.^[77][78]

International business[link]

Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his company. He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate it.^[79]

He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace.^[80] In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one of his few failures. In 1929, Ford accepted Joseph Stalin's invitation to build a model plant (NNAZ, today GAZ) at Gorky, a city now known under its historical name Nizhny Novgorod. He sent American engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help set it up,^[81] including future labor leader Walter Reuther.^[82]

The Ford Motor Company had the policy of doing business in any nation where the United States had diplomatic relations. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold cars and trucks and sometimes assembled them:

Henry Ford in Germany; September 1930

By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one third of all the world’s automobiles. Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all".^[83] Germans who discussed "Fordism" often believed that it represented something quintessentially American. They saw the size, tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at the Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that represented the culture of United States. Both supporters and critics insisted that Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and that the auto industry was the key to understanding economic and social relations in the United States. As one German explained, "Automobiles have so completely changed the American's mode of life that today one can hardly imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what life was like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation".^[84] For many Germans, Ford embodied the essence of successful Americanism.

In My Life and Work, Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological development throughout the world would progress to the point that international trade would no longer be based on (what today would be called) colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all peoples.^[85] His ideas in this passage were vague, but they were idealistic.

Racing[link]

Ford (standing) launched Barney Oldfield's career in 1902

Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his involvement in the sport as both a builder and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. He entered stripped-down Model Ts in races, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an "ocean-to-ocean" (across the United States) race in 1909, and setting a one-mile (1.6 km) oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, Ford attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required the addition of another 1,000 pounds (450 kg) to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter dropped out of racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model Ts, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.

In My Life and Work Ford speaks (briefly) of racing in a rather dismissive tone, as something that is not at all a good measure of automobiles in general. He describes himself as someone who raced only because in the 1890s through 1910s, one had to race because prevailing ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an automobile. Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as this was the definition of success (flawed though the definition was), then his cars would be the best that there were at racing.^[86] Throughout the book, he continually returns to ideals such as transportation, production efficiency, affordability, reliability, fuel efficiency, economic prosperity, and the automation of drudgery in farming and industry, but rarely mentions, and rather belittles, the idea of merely going fast from point A to point B.

Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.

Later career[link]

When Edsel, president of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the presidency. By this point in his life, he had had several cardiovascular events (variously cited as heart attack or stroke) and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such a job.^[87]

Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years, though he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had de facto control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this moment was not different. The directors elected him,^[88] and he served until the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing more than $10 million a month ($134,310,000 a month today). The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production,^[51] but the idea never progressed.

Death[link]

Ford grave, Ford Cemetery

In ill health, Ford ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in September 1945 and went into retirement. He died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 83 in Fair Lane, his Dearborn estate. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.^[89][90]

Sidelights[link]

Interest in materials science and engineering[link]

Henry Ford long had an interest in materials science and engineering. He enthusiastically described his company's adoption of vanadium steel alloys and subsequent metallurgic R&D work.^[91]

Ford long had an interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, especially soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George Washington Carver for this purpose.^{[citation needed]} Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint, etc. This project culminated in 1942, when Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a steel car and was said to be able to withstand blows ten times greater than could steel. Furthermore, it ran on grain alcohol (ethanol) instead of gasoline. The design never caught on.^[92]

Ford was interested in engineered woods ("Better wood can be made than is grown"^[93]) (at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas); corn as a fuel source, via both corn oil and ethanol;^[94] and the potential uses of cotton.^[93] Ford was instrumental in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name "Kingsford". His brother in law, E.G. Kingsford, used wood scraps from the Ford factory to make the briquets.

Ford was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents.

Georgia residence and community[link]

Ford maintained a vacation residence (known as the "Ford Plantation") in Richmond Hill, Georgia. He contributed substantially to the community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous local residents.

Preserving Americana[link]

Ford had an interest in "Americana". In the 1920s, Ford began work to turn Sudbury, Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the nursery rhyme, "Mary had a little lamb", from Sterling, Massachusetts, and purchased the historic Wayside Inn. This plan never saw fruition. Ford repeated the concept of collecting historic structures with the creation of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It may have inspired the creation of Old Sturbridge Village as well. About the same time, he began collecting materials for his museum, which had a theme of practical technology. It was opened in 1929 as the Edison Institute. Although greatly modernized, the museum continues today.

On the idea that he invented the automobile[link]

Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, as is occasionally believed. Indeed, he began as a race driver of other people's cars. As Ford himself noted, by the 1870s, the notion of a "horseless carriage was a common idea".^[95] Many people worked toward the idea, as the history of steam road vehicles and of automobiles shows. Ford was, however, more influential than any other single person in changing the paradigm of the automobile from a very expensive, heavy, hand-built toy for rich people into a lightweight, reliable, affordable, mass-produced mode of transportation for working-class people.

On the idea that he invented the assembly line[link]

Both Ford and Ransom E. Olds are sometimes credited with the invention of the assembly line, although (as is the case with many inventions) the assembly line's development included many inventors. It combined the idea of interchangeable parts (another gradual technological development that is often mistakenly attributed to one individual or another). After 5 years of empirical development, Ford's first moving assembly line (employing conveyor belts) began mass production on or around April 1, 1913. The concept was first applied to subassemblies, and shortly after to the entire chassis. Although it is inaccurate to say that Ford personally invented the assembly line, his sponsorship of its development and use was central to its explosive success in the 20th century.^[96][97]

Miscellaneous[link]

Ford was the winner of the award of Car Entrepreneur of the Century in 1999.

Ford published a book, circulated to youth in 1914, called "The Case Against the Little White Slaver" which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries.^[98]

Ford dressed up as Santa Claus and gave sleigh rides to children at Christmas time on his estate.^[40]

A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons, published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member.^[99]

Ford was especially fond of Thomas Edison, and on Edison's deathbed, he demanded Edison's son catch his final breath in a test tube. The test tube can still be found today in Henry Ford Museum.^[100]

In 1923, Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or "once believed," in reincarnation.^[101] Though it is unclear whether or how long Ford kept such a belief, the San Francisco Examiner from August 26, 1928, published a quote which described Ford's beliefs:

I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.

Popular culture[link]

Mr. & Mrs. Henry Ford in his first car

• In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), society is organized on 'Fordist' lines and the years are dated A.F. or Anno Ford ('In the Year of our Ford') - a reference to A.D., Anno Domini ("in the year of our Lord"); and the expression 'My Ford' is used instead of 'My Lord.'
• Upton Sinclair created a fictional description of Ford in the 1937 novel The Flivver King.
• Symphonic composer Ferde Grofe composed a tone poem in Henry Ford's honor (1938).
• Ford is treated as a character in several historical novels, notably E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975), and Richard Powers' novel Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (1985).
• Ford, his family, and his company were the subjects of a 1986 biography by Robert Lacey entitled Ford: The Men and the Machine. The book was adapted in 1987 into a film starring Cliff Robertson and Michael Ironside.
• In the 2005 alternative history novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth features Ford as Secretary of Interior in a fictional Charles Lindbergh presidential administration.
• The British author Douglas Galbraith uses the event of the Ford Peace Ship as the center of his novel King Henry (2007).^[102]
• Ford appears as a Great Builder in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution.^[103]