Folks Of Interest Henry Ford In His Own Words in 1933

I ran across these letters from Henry Ford to the public in 1933 that exemplify why we are still enjoying his V-8 Fords today. His philosophy of engineering and quality have stood the test of time. All of this was at the height of the Great Depression and he refused to cut corners and make a lesser quality car. My apologies if these have been posted before.

 

Never seen this. Thanks for sharing.

 

"But I Know The Difference." It doesn't get any plainer
than that, pretty frugal with words. Thanks for sharing.

 

Cool letters. Thanks

 

The man himself.

 

After watching the show he is a wild man but I like him very ? My kind of man..

 

Thanks for posting this,good read. HRP

 

I wonder if even Henry would have believed some of his cars would still be running after 85 years or more?

 

I wonder if the move to a all steel body was in response to compe***ion with Chrysler? Really fascinating letters! I wonder if Walter P. Chrysler wrote similar letters?

Henry Ford, like it or not, IS THE ONE MAN, that made our hobby possible by winning that special race.... I will always thank him and think highly of him for his achievements. His designers made beautiful cars. And his drivelines made Chrysler work harder to be compe***ive. My Chrysler collection would not be as astounding if it wasn't for Mr. Ford. I am a Mopar guy, but I also like other makes also. And Ford is definitely highly respected by me.... My 2¢ worth...

Thank you for sharing these letters! Wow!

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You fellas know those were his general ideas, and put into words by writers. The ol' man was barely literate.

 

Henry Ford was a very flawed man in many ways, but he produced cars that we are p***ionate about today, some 85 years later. There is some very interesting reading here:

Henry Ford, the ignorant genius - introduction
http://www.abelard.org/henry-ford.php

http://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-astonishing-ignorance-of-henry-ford/31368


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Sure, why not? It would give him a lot of satisfaction too.

Interesting that he was pointing out how important the fuel economy of his cars in 1933, a lot of people today claim that "nobody cared about gas mileage" in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

'Flawed'. (as we all are, in some ways, as perceived by others...LOL)
If he had gone through 4 years of college, God only knows what the cars would have looked like..."More to the left, yes, more..."

Quotient considered, I'm relieved that he did what he did, 'unions be damned'. His philosophy. Mine too.

 

Great post!
I printed them all out to read again and again. I think of Henry every time I fire up the charcoal grill!

 

If Henry Ford really had his way.....Ford Motor Company would still be building the Model T today.

 

If this is indeed his "mark" ***uming the comment above regarding his illiteracy, it is very similar to the blue oval badge. Interesting. Great post.

 

I have just finishing reading the links I posted above in addition to these. Read them all to see a fascinating and complex portrait of a man's unparalleled success and equally great failings, an equal combination of genius and ignorance. That a man with an 8th grade education from rural America could attain so much is astounding! His admiration and connection to Adolf Hitler and anti-Semitism was the most disturbing part but his support for Franklin Roosevelt in the depression and the war effort were a complete turnaround. In the early 1900's I see parallels in today's society and business today, a hundred years later, which proves the adage "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Henry Ford, ruthless business manipulator
http://www.abelard.org/ford/ford2-business.php

Henry Ford, mechanical man - Model T, modern times
http://www.abelard.org/ford/ford3-model-t.php

Quotes by and about Henry Ford
http://www.abelard.org/ford/ford4_quotes.php

 

Well... it may be a fact that if Henry would have lived longer, Fords would have had front axles 'way beyond 1948!

 

Henry was a complicated guy for sure, one moment he's a true visionary and the next moment an anachronism.

 

x2

 

After watching about 4 hours of the show about the early years of the automobile in America that was on this week. It is interesting that these letters are posted today. A very good read and thanks for posting this. Henry was for sure the man who motorized America. His Model T made the car available and affordable and without it who knows how long it would have taken for this to happen.

Henry was probably a flawed man. Who the hell isn't to some degree? In the recent show Henry Ford was not shown in a favorable light, as a matter of fact I saw it as a very negative interpretation of the man. How much is true and how much is just made up? Henry is not around to comment on that, and if the truth was known the real truth is somewhere in the middle, it usually is.

I truly believe that all Americans owe him a big thank you for the good he did, as to the bad will I don't know about that. I wonder of the producers of that TV show new the real truth as well, or as is the case many times the revise history to fit into there neat little plan of making money.

 

Henry Ford as well as Thomas Edison and the like proved to the world that one does not need an Ivy League education to change the world.

 

Fordlandia......
A South American Rubber plantation built by Ford. Ford tried there what he could not in the United States....his own personal version of a utopia. Ford work...Ford farms...Ford Power and utilities...Ford houses.... Ford streets...Ford doctors... Ford Schools with Ford teachers...all in all, pretty Creepy.

I really like the Model T and want to own one some day but the pre-war Ford we all love...the Model A(baby Lincoln)..the V8...that 30s Ford style...that Cl***...All that is from Edsel.

Sadly Ford chose a thug union busting Gangster Harry Bennett....a leg breaker, over his own son. Bennett ran the Ford Service Division in what could accurately be described as a Industrial Gestapo.

I guess Henry identified with a such a man. On the other hand he had contempt for the educated upper cl*** born into money, men like his son Edsel. The irony just boils.

 

After further reading I was premature in giving Henry complete credit for all of his success with our favorite V-8 Fords, although the idea of the flathead V-8 was solely his. It should have been equally shared with his only son, Edsel. It is interesting that Edsel, became much of what Henry was not, but which Henry may well, in his soul, have hoped to be. Edsel was a devoted and loyal son, who likely read what was in his ignorant father’s heart, and Edsel became an impressive adult. Henry’s grandson, Henry Ford II, has been said to have spent his life atoning for his grandfather’s sins.

Henry Ford was the pivotal manufacturing genius of the 20th century. His m*** production of the automobile changed the world. But his populist obsession with simple people who wanted simple machines for a rural lifestyle anchored him to outmoded ideas that debilitated Ford Motor Company. What if Henry had retired and turned over control to his son in 1926?

Edsel Ford, the forgotten Ford, was an able car guy who could have remedied the years of mismanagement by his father. He was nothing like his self-centered and autocratic father. He suffered years of bullying by Henry, and he died young. Many of Edsel's decisions were either overruled or nullified by his father. He was president of Ford in name only.

Yet Edsel helped rescue Lincoln and created one of the industry's most stylish automobiles. He approved a new generation of cars for the postwar market. He was a visionary.

Could Edsel have rewritten the history of Ford Motor? His father never gave him the chance. But what if Henry had stepped aside; what if Edsel had responded quickly and forcefully to the compe***ion from General Motors and Chrysler Corp. during the 1920s?

This is the vision of what might have been.

By the mid-1920s, Edsel Ford knew Ford Motor Co. was dying. His father, founder Henry Ford, had steadily lost touch with the industry. By 1926, sales were 30 percent below the 2 million units sold just three years earlier. Henry Ford remained wedded to the utilitarian Model T. Ford's preoccupation with the "Tin Lizzie's" ability to carry milk cans and "booshel baskets" froze innovation and planning at the world's largest auto manufacturer.

Edsel watched as General Motors posed an increasing threat with its strategy of building a variety of models for "every purse and every purpose." Innovations such as hydraulic brakes, a six-cylinder engine, electric starter and others found their way onto GM cars quickly - but took years to be offered in Ford models.

Edsel's chance came in 1926 when Henry stepped down. Henry was 63 and deserved a rest. His wife, Clara, and Edsel's wife, Eleanor, demanded change. Edsel had been president for seven years and was ready to take over. Edsel, Henry told the press, was a capable and accomplished executive.

Modern observers say there is no way an entrepreneur of Henry Ford's accomplishment and temperament would have stepped out of the way for his son. David Cole, director for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., says Henry Ford was too strong a personality to give up control of the company he founded in 1903.

Still, historians ***ert that Edsel was a capable, professional manager. He displayed the intelligence, ability and mastery of detail to respond to key issues. It is doubtful that Ford would have survived without the energy, vision and devotion of Edsel Ford. Here is what might have happened had he had the chance to run the show.

Edsel at the helm

Days after Edsel became chairman of Ford Motor in January 1926, he received a report that confirmed his worst fears. Ernest Kanzler, a Ford vice president and Edsel's brother-in-law, warned that the Model T was so dated that Ford's future financial health was in jeopardy. Edsel ordered the planned Model A put into production that year - with a six-cylinder engine and hydraulic brakes, innovations long resisted by his father.

Edsel's orderly process of designing and building the Model A minimized what could have been a lengthy ***embly line shutdown because of the model changeover from the Model T. Ford and its dealers probably avoided m***ive losses for want of a new product from the shutdown. Detroit was spared a recession from thousands of idled workers. And archrival Chevrolet missed a golden opportunity to gain market share.

Edsel's rapid restructuring of Ford surprised the industry, but not his colleagues. Edsel's skills had been honed from years of operating the business side of the business, including sales, marketing and keeping the books. But he was particularly gifted in design.

Years earlier, Edsel had pushed his father to buy the ***ets of Lincoln Motor Co. The January 1922 acquisition of Lincoln became the seed of Edsel's grand plans. The upscale Lincoln would become a unit of Ford Motor Co. The combination of Edsel's styling and Ford mechanics made the Lincoln superior to the vehicle built under its previous owners, Henry and Wilfred Leland. Even Henry Ford had to admit that his son knew something about autos.

The popular response to the new Model A in 1927 and critical acclaim for the Lincoln did little to ease Edsel's worries. He knew that even surging Model A sales were not enough to rescue Ford - not with Alfred P. Sloan running GM.

The Alfred P. Sloan threat

Henry Ford's strategy of depending on a single, affordable car to the exclusion of everything else was his greatest failure. He didn't respond to the developing medium-priced, m*** automotive market that began after World War I. Henry's contempt for "gadgets" put the company in the slow lane. Chevrolet had hydraulic brakes in 1924; Ford added them 14 years later.

"He (Henry) knew his customers, knew that they were simple, God-fearing people who would not want these corrupting luxuries and would not desert him. But it proved that he no longer knew his customers," wrote David Halberstam in The Reckoning.

Henry's blind arrogance played into the hands of GM Chairman Alfred P. Sloan, who knew as early as 1921 that success in the m*** market favored expansion in the medium-priced field. Chrysler Corp. quickly had expanded the number of its offerings and became the No. 2 automaker by 1936.

At the start of the 1930s, GM had five model lines, and Ford had two. In 1922, GM's market share stood at 18.5 percent. By 1927, it reached 42.5 percent. Ford dropped from 48 percent of the market in 1922 to 18 percent in 1927. The tables had turned on Ford. Could Edsel have minimized the m***ive market share loss? What follows is an alternate history that allowed Edsel a free hand at Ford.

The middle market

Henry Ford didn't see the middle market coming. Edsel did. Henry failed to see that low-cost automobiles such as the Model T were saturating the auto market by the early 1920s. The rising affluence in the United States gave people greater disposable income for big-ticket items. They wanted more than the bare bones automobiles Ford offered. Henry Ford disliked "gadgets" such as hydraulic brakes and was reluctant to diversify his model lineup. That put his company at a disadvantage, which might have been avoided had Edsel been given more power. Edsel knew as early as 1921 that between the low-cost market of the Model T and the high end of the Packard, Pierce-Arrow and Cadillac was a giant market waiting to be tapped.

Edsel knew that Sloan's middle-market strategy threatened Ford. Henry had ignored Edsel's pleas for change. Henry was obsessive about keeping the Model T unchanged from year to year. Besides, Ford controlled the automotive market through the 1920s.

Henry's exit from Ford allowed Edsel to move the company out of his father's one-size-fits-all strategy in 1926, just after Sloan began enacting his price-step plan with Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Oakland (later Pontiac), Oldsmobile car and GMC truck.

Edsel launched the Lincoln Zephyr in late 1926 to ****ress the Lincoln line. He priced it with the most expensive Buicks and Chrysler. It sold well. Managing numerous car lines so car buyers could move up or down required great organizational skills - skills Edsel had long demonstrated.

Ford had yet to receive the cost savings that GM and Chrysler enjoyed from standardized bodies. But Edsel was preoccupied speeding up plans for a crucial move: an entrant for the high-volume middle-market.

It was the Mercury. Edsel aimed it directly in the high-volume Pontiac-Dodge segment and launched Mercury in 1935, three years earlier than his managers said was possible. Ford was catching up - and just in time. Mercury was established just before World War II brought civilian car production to a halt with the announcement of the 1942 models. Ford and Mercury were ready for the postwar period.

But Edsel did not live to see the results. He died in 1943 at age 49.

Edsel's success with Mercury eliminated a need to fill the gap between Mercury and Lincoln. There was no need for a fourth car line. There was no need for the Edsel.

The Edsel line

Ford Motor, in fact, launched the Mercury in October 1938 - too late to establish it in the market. The result was the introduction in September 1957 of the Edsel.

Had Edsel Ford lived into the 1950s, it is unlikely that his legacy and Ford Motor's reputation would have been tarnished by the Edsel debacle. The Edsel was a car Edsel Ford biographer Henry Dominguez, author of Edsel: The Story of Henry Ford's Forgotten Son, called "glitzy, gaudy, and overly dramatic - the an***hesis of the designs Edsel loved."

Henry Ford II, Edsel's son, said he would always regret approving the Edsel name for his newest car line. The company lost $350 million on it.

 

Sadly, this how Edsel's life ended. By 1943, the constant warring with Bennett and his father left Edsel ridden with ulcers. While the elder Ford blamed the sickness on Edsel's enlightened, stylish lifestyle, he forced him to drink unpasteurized milk from one of the Ford farms. The unfiltered contaminants therein killed Edsel on May 26, 1943. He was only 49.

 

Youza! I didn't know about the personal life of the Ford's.... Seems tragic and not to warm...

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Vintage, thanks for thinking of your HAMB friends. I had never seen these letters before. Quite an insight to a man, no matter what you might think of him personally, who most definitely changed the world.

Thanks again.

 

Enlightening and more than interesting. Thanks to all that contributed to this thread.

 

The first article, apparently written by someone calling himself "Abelard", repeatedly criticizes Henry Ford as uneducated. Ford was certainly well educated in metallurgy, mechanics, business etc., but not from formal ins***utions.

Oddly, the second article claims that Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for calling him an “ignorant idealist", but the image of the newspaper clipping states that the lawsuit was due to the Tribune calling him an "Anarchist".

While it does appear that Mr. Ford was sorely lacking in knowledge outside of his fields of expertise, it almost seems that the articles are written by people who have spent much time in formal educational ins***utions, relishing the opportunity to belittle someone who hasn't.

 

Very very interesting. do you have a biography of him that you read?