PastImperfect: Henry FordProbably more has been written about Henry Ford than any of the fascinating figures in the long story of motoring.
The son of an Irish emigrant father and a mother of Dutch origin, Henry Ford was born in 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan, where his father farmed 80-acres. Henry showed little interest in farming, preferring instead all things mechanical.
At 16 he took his first job as an apprentice machinist in Detroit before moving to a marine engine company and finally to a small firm that installed Westinghouse steam engines. In 1888, Henry married Clara Bryant and took a small isolated house where he set up a workshop. This was the beginning of many years experimentation which were to lead to his first successful car, a quadricycle, in 1896. Despite the offer of a well-paid job with the Detroit Edison Company, Edison himself advised Ford to follow his own inclinations, with the result that Ford determined to devote his time to the motor car.
With a partner, Tom Cooper, he built a number of racing cars, one of which won a famous challenge match with a Winton car. As a result of the publicity which ensued, Ford scraped together $5,000 to found the Detroit Automobile Company. However, the company soon got into financial difficulty and was sold to Leland and Faulconer in 1900. This company later became Cadillac.
Undaunted, Ford tried again in 1903 when 12 investors subscribed $28,000 to found The Ford Motor Company. Their investment must have had one of the best financial returns of all time - the original $2,500 invested by Senator Couzens eventually being worth no less than $30 million.
Why did Ford succeed on this occasion? Ford had evolved a vision of motoring for the masses and constantly cut costs to enable his products to be sold at bargain prices. He was not the first carmaker to introduce mass-production - this honour belonged to Winton - but he refined his methods, introducing innovation after innovation to keep costs down. This culminated in the Ford Model N - the first low-priced four-cylinder car to be produced by the company.
Ford was the first manufacturer to follow modern laws of economic production, and revealed himself to be an original thinker in this and other spheres. He tried unsuccessfully to enter politics in 1918 when he ran for the US Senate, and also in 1924 when he sought the nomination for president. He passed on control of his motor empire to his son Edsel, but following Edsel's death at an early age, Ford passed the role to his grandson, also named Henry Ford.
When he died in 1947 at the age of 84, Henry Ford left behind him the greatest automotive empire the world has ever seen, as well as a legacy of social and economic ideas enlivened by his original thinking.