A Brief History
On March 16, 1958, the 50 millionth Ford automobile rolled off the assembly line, a shiny new Thunderbird!
Digging Deeper
Henry Ford, who did not actually invent the automobile, certainly is the man most responsible for making it what it is today. Ford’s first attempt at a car company, The Henry Ford Company, became the Cadillac Motor Company after Ford left that business in 1902. In 1903, Ford formed the Ford Motor Company with the help of investors impressed by his success racing cars (which included the Dodge brothers that ended up starting their own namesake car company). At that time in history, car racing was the most persuasive method to convince customers of a car’s reliability and value.
Developing the moving assembly line and designing his cars to be as cheap and easily assembled as possible allowed Ford to mass produce his Model T at an affordable price ($250 at its lowest) which resulted in massive sales. It has been estimated that half of all cars that had been built in the world before 1920 were built by Ford (per Spartacus Educational), and through the 1920’s Ford made about half of all the cars sold in the US.
Ford’s personality had its drawbacks which ultimately hurt sales and market share, such as his insistence that all his cars would be painted black. Obviously, plenty of potential customers thought otherwise. Ford was also a virulent anti-Jewish hate monger that blamed Jews (international bankers supposedly) for fomenting World War I and World War II! Ford even refused to manufacture airplane engines for Britain early in World War II although he was happy to build trucks for Hitler’s Germany!
Hitler kept a photo of Henry Ford on his desk! (See here for more facts about Adolf Hitler) Ford’s manufacturing plant making trucks for Germany used French POW’s as slave labor! Ford had suffered minor strokes in the 1930’s and during World War II it became obvious his mental faculties were declining. His grandson, Henry Ford II took over Ford Motor Company, and Ford died in 1947, a broken man.
Ford Motor Company did produce massive numbers of airplanes, jeeps and other products in support of the war effort once the US entered the war, although Ford believed the proper course would be for the US to ally itself with Germany and Britain against the Soviets and Japanese.
Ford Motor Company today is the 5th largest selling car brand in the world, and second in the US. The Ford Focus is the biggest selling car, and the Ford F-150 pick up truck is the largest selling vehicle in the world. Certainly notable, but a far cry from the heady days of 1913-1930 when Ford ruled the automobile world. In 2013 Ford sold about two and a half million cars in the US alone, and when you consider some of the car companies that have gone out of business just since 1950, that is not that bad! (Some defunct car nameplates since 1950 include: Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, Plymouth, Mercury, Studebaker, Nash, Packard, Checker, American Motors, Kaiser, Sterling, Bricklin, DeLorean Triumph, Saab, International Harvester, DeSoto, Hummer, and Hudson.)
Question for students (and subscribers): What bygone cars do you miss? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please read…
Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004.
Woeste, Victoria Saker. Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech. Stanford University Press, 2012.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="1402 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=1402">6 Comments
Do you really expect to be taken seriously with this kind of drivel? I quote:
“Ford’s cracked personality had its drawbacks which ultimately hurt sales and market share, such as his insistence that all his cars be painted black…” In actual fact, Ford insisted on nothing of the sort. Automotive paints that are applied as a spray, dry quickly (in an oven), and keep their shine for years didn’t even begin to come along until well after Henry Ford was dead and buried. At the time that Ford first developed the assembly line method of car building, i.e., 1909-1913, painting a car was done by applying enamel paint with a brush, waiting for it to dry, and then hand finishing. The whole process took about two weeks. Can you imagine how much space is required to store two weeks worth of car bodies in a mass-production car factory? (Not until DuPont introduced nitrocellulose paints in the mid-’20s did things begin to change substantially.) It just so happened that black enamel dried a lot quicker than other colors because black absorbs heat (duh) and speed was Ford’s primary concern because the whole object of the exercise was to use mass-production to bring the price of cars within the reach of the common man which is why he had his top technicians working for four years on the development of the assembly line in the first place. In 1914 Ford production reached over 308,000 cars (to nearest rival Willys-Overland’s 48,000 or so.) Two weeks worth of production equated to roughly 12,300 cars and all of it at the then new Highland Park factory. Try storing that lot under cover if you can.
That’s only one example of the biased and approximate rubbish that this piece consists of. Indeed, that paragraph alone contains two other statements that can only be described as pure disinformation. I won’t bother to set them straight or mention the rest of this so-called “article” because my time is too precious. However, I do have a question: how old is the writer? I ask because the writing style and content (including the repetitive use of the word “cracked” to drum the point into people’s heads) remind me of the kind of history homework that an impressionable but not very bright 12-yr old boy might hand in. This is the sort of amateurish crap that gives information on the internet a bad name. Grade: F.
Numerous sources quote Henry Ford “any color so long as it’s black.” We are not referring to the era of 1909-1913 when Ford first instituted the assembly line and painting was primitive, we are referring to the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when Ford was losing market share in huge numbers. (How is a Ford like a bathtub? They are both useful but you don’t want to be seen in one. This was a mid-late 1920’s joke.) You seem defensive about Ford, but the article is not negative about Ford Motor Company, just certain well documented problems with Henry Ford’s personality. Yeas, his ideas and methods made for spectacular success, but unwillingness to adapt also led to massive loss of market share. The “cracked” references were written when our web site bore that name and the allusion was apropos. For what it is worth, we have only owned Ford cars since 1985.
Please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVq0qCpcCoA
I’ve always known that ford was a huge business but I didn’t know Henry Ford supported Hitler. I also had no idea that the F-150 was that popular world wide.
It is interesting to see how the major car companies seemed to branch from one another in the beginning. Also didn’t know that Henry Ford supported Hitler!
It is surprising that a brand considered very American today was at some point very un-American. Ford refusing to produce for Britain but instead helping Hitler was a shock to read about!