Henry’s Attic: Some Fascinating Gifts to Henry Ford and His Museum

4 Automobiles and Trucks

CHAPTER 4 Automobiles and Trucks ffl N JULY 15, 1903, E. Pfennig, a Chicago dentist, bought a Model A from the Ford Motor Company for $850. This seemingly insignificant event marked a turning point in Henry Ford's career—and a milestone in automotive history—for with it, the Ford Motor Company, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy with $223.65 in the bank, had made its first sale. Almost miraculously, by the following week, the company's bank balance had risen to $6,486.44, and Henry Ford was on his way. Until then, however, it had seemed nip and tuck whether Henry would ever fulfill his promise to "build a motor car for the multitude." Such avehicle, he had vowed,would be large enough for the family, but small enough for the unskilled individual to operate easily and care for, and it shall be light in weight that it may be economical in maintenance. It will be built of honest materials, by the best workmen that money can hire, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it shall be so low in price that the man of moderate means may own one and enjoy with his family the blessings of happy hours spent in God's great open spaces. The Ford Motor Company was less than five weeks old when Dr. Pfennig's purchase rescued it from bankruptcy. Henry Ford and Alex Malcomson, partners since the previous summer, owned 51 percent of the company's shares but had put up no money. It had taken some doing to assemble the ten men who actually financed the operation, for Henry Ford's record up to that time was hardly one to inspire confidence in prospective stockholders. With his building of the first Quadricycle in 1896 and a second, improved one a year or so later, Henry Ford had achieved some local fame, and on August 5, 1899, a group of wealthy and influential Detroiters—with shrewd eyes on the automobile boom then overtaking the nation—formed the Detroit Automobile Company, putting Henry in charge of the plant. Although Henry had a prototype for a passenger car in his second Quadricycle, he continued to improve the design, refusing to put the car into production until he had perfected it to his satisfaction. He did, however, manage to produce a novel type of vehicle for the Detroit Automobile Company: a gasoline-powered delivery truck. Although it was apparently a dismal failure—slow, heavy, unreliable, and complicated to manufacture— the truck had at least one successful run in the winter of 1900; a local newspaperman who witnessed it ran his story under the banner headline"SWIFTER THAN A RACE HORSE IT FLEW OVER THE ICY STREETS!" Good publicity notwithstanding, the shareholders of the Detroit Automobile Company had soon had enough. In January 1901, having watched their expectations of quick profit vanish as Henry's tinkering continued to delay production of a passenger car—and having been further rankled by the astounding production figures of the "merry Oldsmobile" (425 in a single year)—they filed formal notice of the company's dissolution. Not all the shareholders of the Detroit Automobile Company lost faith in Henry; a few continued to back him in his next endeavor, the building of a racing car. By 1900 all prominent car manufacturers were entering their vehicles in races, strutting their stuff in front of an enthralled public, and Henry, for once in his life, apparently decided to join the mainstream. Not only was building a winning racer a way to fame and some hard cash; if 107 he could master the problems inherent in building a car for speed, he reasoned, all should fall easily into place for his passenger car. Moreover, Henry seems to have been bitten by the racing bug, a condition that evidently did not last very long. As he emerged from the dust in the wake of his first race—in which he defeated the greatly favored and well-known auto maker Alexander Winton—he is alleged to have gasped, "Boy, I'll never do that again! That tight board fence was right here in front of my face all the time! I was scared to death." The glory that attended Henry'swell-publicized victory in October 1901 resulted in his faithful backers quickly rallying round to form the Henry Ford Company—a venture that lasted less than four months. Henry's preoccupation with racing cars and his continuing refusal to...