Humble beginnings Henry Ford had been working at the Edison Lighting Company in Detroit as a stationary steam engine engineer since 1884..he happened to read, a piece in a science journal written by Nicholas Otto, who was currently engaged in research regarding internal combustion engines. Ford was intrigued by the idea, and developed an obsession to build one. He had been working on the Quadricycle equipped with a petrol engine for propulsion, and joined the Detroit Automotive Co., financed by prominent businessmen, in 1899. This venture failed because Ford kept tinkering with the mechanicals, and the investors wanted to see something saleable in production. He then decided to prove his worth by racing his Number 4 won a race in October 1901, beating a Winton, and enabled him to get another batch of investors to finance him, calling the company the Henry Ford Co. This, too, failed, because he ran off to design another race car – the 999 - which was equipped with a front engine instead of one placed under the seat as in other contemporary cars. When the investors hired Henry Leland to assess the business’ assets, he had his own engine design, and the name of the company was changed to Cadillac in late 1902. The meat of the story began in Detroit, as most of us know, on the 6th of June, 1903.
Launched from a small factory, the company was put together with $28,000, put together by a band of twelve investors who had been impressed with the race performance of the 999. They comprised a coal dealer, his bookkeeper, a banker who trusted the coal dealer, a couple of brothers who owned the machine shop to make the engines, two lawyers, a clerk, a carpenter, the owner of a general store, and a manufacturer of rifles and wind-mills. The first car was bought by a Dr. E. Pfennig from Chicago. This was welcome news to the ‘stockholders’ of the company, because the remaining capital was a miserly $223! After the first car was sold, the company saw much better fortunes coming its way, with 1,700 cars sold in the first fifteen months of the operation from the converted wagon factory Research and development took priority at this stage of the Ford movement...1903 to 1908 saw all the letters of the alphabet up to S being used to name the various Ford ‘horseless carriages’, equipped with varying engines and transmissions, running the whole gamut of cylinder configurations, shaft drives, chain drives, and engine placement. 
Around this time, the Model K was introduced, priced at $2,500, and did pretty badly. This partly led to Henry Ford’s belief that the future of the automotive industry lay in designing inexpensive cars and counting on quantity to supply revenues. The coal dealer, though, did not agree with this philosophy, so he exited the company and Henry Ford purchased a majority stock in the company (58.5 per cent), and assumed the role of president on the death of the banker. The cars generally used were Packards, White and Ford trucks, and a couple of times a Lincoln kitchen truck, and a Ford truck designed as a water tank. Revolution The company had been expanding at an alarming rate for the last few years, with the demand for their cheap, reliable Model T seemingly inexhaustible. Henry Ford hit upon a novel idea at this time - increasing the minimum wage he paid his labourers to $5. This was an unprecedented move at the time, but according to Ford it was the finest cost- cutting move’ he ever made. He reasoned that if his employees would be able to afford the cars, the same money would be rotated back into the company, and would increase demand for the same. This started a social revolution, just like the invention of mass production had started the modern industrial revolution. By around 1925,15,007,033 Model Ts had been sold, and the Ford Motor Company was the largest producer of automobiles, with subsidiary assembly plants across the country and distribution spanning the globe. The 
Model T had satisfied the masses’ desire for a cheap, affordable car that could be bought und run ‘by a 15 year old’, as Henry Ford put it. But the competition had caught up, and super ceded the design of the T, which was aging by now. It just couldn’t compete with cars which were offering more power and better styling, so the whole company practically shut down production for six months starting May 31, 1927 , to prepare, retool and design tie replacement... The model A, and onwards.., This car answered all the requirements being made by Ford customers, and the company managed to put out 4,500,000 of them before demand started falling. Ford were ready for that too, though... they had managed to cast a V8 engine block, in one piece, flying in the face of experts’ claims that it couldn’t be done. 
The V8 research had started in late 1929, and various prototypes had been installed in Model As by the end of 1930. Final approval hadn’t arrived by the end of 1931, so on November 29 the production of the Model B with a ‘new, refined’ four-pot engine was started.This didn’t run for too long, though, because a month later the V8 was put into production. There were many problems with the engine, though, and since the ‘new, refined’ four-cylinder engine was easily available, there were both V8 and four-cylinder cars in 1932. In stark contrast to the ‘You can have it in any colour, as long as it is black’ philosophy at the beginning of the mass production of the
Model T, the 1932 cars were available in 14 different body types. The number of body styles and paint available increased regularly through the years, reaching 23 different body types in 1936. Hydraulic brakes were introduced in 1939 in all Fords. 1940 saw the introduction of sealed beam headlamps, controllable ventilation and fingertip-shift gears. In 1941, the largest, soft6st-riding, roomiest Ford appeared. The suspension had been redesigned, and in the latter part of the year the l940 Ford was introduced with the option for two engines. But by April of 1942, Ford had committed themselves to the war effort, and had stopped producing civilian models - the last automobile company to do so. World War II.The most famous Ford in the war was obviously the Jeep. This rugged vehicle had been designed by other companies (see our June issue), and was produced in great numbers by Ford for the war effort. As detailed in the box, the Ford Motor Company bought out the Stout Metal Airplane Company, which produced aircraft for civil aviation and the war effort. Since the contribution of Ford to the Allies’ war effort, along with other majors Chrysler, General Motors and the venerable Harley Davidson is pretty well known, it might be prudent to point out how the companies supplied materiel to the Axis powers, too. 
After huge expansion from the 1920s to the 30s, covering areas in Europe and the Far East, these companies had subsidiaries spread out throughout their covered areas. They also owned production facilities in Europe, which were located in countries like Germany, Poland, Austria and Japan - all of which were instrumental in the war. Because of their near-complete control over the production of automobiles in all the countries they were involvement in, they were involved to a large extent in the war preparations. GM’s German plants were building thousands of jet engines and bomber engines for the Luftwaffe while at the same time the American counterpart was producing aircraft engines for the US Army Air Corps. Ford's German concern opened a plant to produce troop-transport vehicles for the German Army... the Chief Executive of Ford that year received a Nazi German Eagle. First Class, for his efforts. Combined, GM and Ford produced more than 70 per cent of the military transport vehicles used by the Axis powers. Further, Ford and GM demanded reparations for collateral damage caused by Allied bombing of their Axis facilities. Ford was awarded with almost one million dollars as a result.., And had the war ended otherwise, the companies would have come out as fervent supporters of the Nazis, as opposed to how they are now talked about as having patriotically supported the American war effort. 
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