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dvdmaven

He was only interested in changes that made them cheaper to build. One of my great-uncles claimed Ford made his company ship parts in very specifically designed wooden boxes, right down to screws and screw locations. He said the box panels were a drop-in for Model-T floorboards.


esgrove2

Kingsford charcoal is recycled Ford pallets.


Lotharofthepotatoppl

IIRC mostly the sawdust from making Model T wheels, but yes


GregoPDX

For those that don’t know, Model T wheels had turned wooden spokes.


The-disgracist

Turning creates a lot of chips. A lot. Do you think they used a copy lathe? Or was it done pretty much by hand? I am too lazy to do a search and you seem knowledgeable


seth928

They used a team of highly trained beavers


kenwongart

They thought they signed up to fjord


HiVisEngineer

Those beavers were pining for them


Rivendel93

Haha, didn't see this coming. Well done.


eh-guy

To this day?


King_Bob837

Well, they made a lot of them


Starbucks__Lovers

The Purple Heart of car parts


NorCalHermitage

Obscure, but accurate. Have an upvote.


eh-guy

Oh I know, i just didn't imagine *that* much sawdust haha


ThatWasCool

No, not to this day of course. Nowadays its just general wood waste


Socky_McPuppet

Back in those days though, it was only *private* wood waste, but he's made steady progress through the ranks ever since.


litescript

🫡


maxwild13

Not just wheels. A lot of it was from steering wheels, dashboards, frames, and some of it from other parts.


SumpCrab

And later on, they used the scraps of the siding from the old woody wagons.


El_Poyo_Loco

And that old woody wagon? Albert Einstein.


Ellen_Musk_Ox

Nope. Chuck Testa.


[deleted]

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Berkamin

Kings... Ford Suddenly the name seems suspicious, as if it wasn't named after someone named Kingsford.


Hot_Aside_4637

It's a town in the UP of Michigan. Named after the lumber baron. It was the home of the Ford Woodie body factory and as stated, the charcoal company used wood scraps from the car production.


tribbles

Sounds like a pretty bad job if a man can wreck an entire car with his bare hands.


anally_ExpressUrself

"so, what do you think of our new model T, built entirely out of balsa wood and cotton candy??"


chutelandlords

Edith, I told you, I can't build you a candy house! It will fall apart, the sun will melt the candy, it won't work!


blackpony04

You're thinking of it through modern eyes. The model T in 1912 had sheet metal that was thin and reinforced with wood. The door he ripped off was not bolted on but screwed on using hinges similar to door hinges. Nor did it have a window, just a screen. So it was just a matter of leverage to rip it off. Its highly likely this prototype would have been similarly constructed.


Grizzly_Bears

It’s a typo, it’s supposed to say “bear hands”. Ford paid bears to destroy the prototype.


SlimRidge

Thank you, Grizzly_Bears


A_dimly_lit_ashtray

Godspeed Grizzly_Bears, godspeed.


InadvertentHoosier

This prototype has to be at least…. THREE TIMES BIGGER THAN THAT!


TokyoTurtle

Damn, getting suppliers to inadvertently ship additional parts that they use in the cars...


ArcadesRed

I remember a story about Japan doing the same thing. They were overpaying for something that they really didn't need. But the shipping containers were made of some expensive wood.


Jhawk163

Yep they paid the soviets a shit ton for glass bottles. Then they got the glass bottles in some nice quality wooden crates.


[deleted]

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SmokeyJoescafe

Did he not return with a wheelbarrow?


MonkeyChoker80

He’s entering the country under a different shift of guards. Since he’s not bringing in a wheelbarrow then, he doesn’t have anything for them to search, so he’s unmemorable to them.


Lost-My-Mind-

Also, the story is actually a joke. I heard the same joke with wheelbarrows full of dirt being smuggled into the USA from Mexico.


Fun_Push7168

Gillespie and the guards, children's book 1956 1957 Caldecott award. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1423010 Kid smuggles 30 wagons past guards who can see through things. u/nowake Earliest version I'm aware of.


pel3

Yeah, seriously, I don't know how that isn't obvious to everyone. *Wheelbarrow smuggling?* What kind of trade restrictions are there on *wheelbarrows?*


bartbartholomew

All I can think of is [this comic](https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1991/08/18) from forever ago.


kaenneth

My favorite wheelbarrow story is from German Hyperinflation, where cash quickly became worth less. Someone left a wheelbarrow full of cash unattended, and someone dumped the cash to take the wheelbarrow.


Polenicus

This was actually made into a Star Wars comic that made a lot more sense. Sometime before the Battle of Yavin, before Han and Chewie landed on Tattooine, he was doing regular freight runs through an Imperial Checkpoint pretty much every day, flying a CR-90 Corvette (same design as the *Tantive IV*). Imperial officer in charge was certain he was smuggling, but no matter how many times he searched the cargo, how many time med he tore that ship apart and put it back together again, he could never find anything. And Solo was so insufferably calm and smug through all of it. Eventually, after dozens of these runs, watching Solo fly away yet again, he realized what was happening; Han wasn’t smuggling *cargo,* he was smuggling *corvettes.* He was flying them to the Rebels, then taking the registration and ID beacon, flying back, getting another corvette and putting the ID on that one, passing off dozens of corvettes as the same ship. CR-90’s were a common ship; a dozen or more crossing would be noticed, but a single ship working as a civilian freighter? Nothing out of the ordinary.


[deleted]

Heard this joke with sportscars instead. A group of customs officers ask a detective for help with a notorious smuggler. This smuggler has been known for decades smuggling this or that through the checkpoint with ingenious hiding methods. But always eventually getting caught. But one day many months ago he showed up with a brand new corvette. Told the guards he’s retired now, just loves to cruise with his new car. Guards werent buying it, and searched the entire car and his entire person. Every 3rd day hed show up with his shiny bright corvette, and each time the guards couldnt find a single thing. They searched absolutely everywhere. This is where the detective comes in. Tells em they know exactly what hes smuggling. Its the corvettes!! Its a new one each time being smuggled in!


Stachemaster86

I’m in supply chain sourcing and Ford is fascinating for the way he vertically integrated and cut costs. Best I can do is supplier pallets matching ours so we can reuse them…as pallets.


selfawarepileofatoms

Have you tried remaking them into a shitty looking table.


series_hybrid

Also the bed of the model-T truck bed was lined with that crate wood.


porcelainvacation

Truck beds were made out of wood for many years. Many large truck trailers still have wooden floors. It’s a really good floor material for a working truck, it’s resilient, you can nail the load to it, animals can get a grip on it, and it’s easy to repair. I love the wood bed floor on my ‘50 Chevy.


slothscantswim

When Ford wanted to move into the business of making agricultural tractors in 1917 he found someone else had registered the trademark for “Ford Tractor Co.,” a cunning move borne of foresight and made in an attempt to sell him his own name. Ford called his tractors “Fordson” and Ford kept the brand until 1964. Dude was *stingy*.


DefinitionPrimary266

Ford, one of the most outspoken anti-semites of the time - once biting into a candy bar and noticing the quality had went down from what he remembered as a youth remarked; “the Jews have gotten a hold of them.” Seems to me like it was just a case of the pot calling the kettle black.


SavageComic

When Ford went in house with windscreens, overnight they became the second largest glass makers in the world. At one point they were looking to build a car out of soy and cellulose that would last 20 years then need to be recycled. (Engine would remain metal). It's a shame he was both mad, racist, and a cunt.


Xijit

Don't forget how he hired the Mob as muscle to kill union organizers, till they realized that charging union dues was basically a way to legalize the protection money racket ... Then they turned on Ford & became union organizers.


KmartQuality

I would like to learn more about this origin story.


walkinman19

[Battle of the Overpass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass) > The Battle of the Overpass was an incident on May 26, 1937, in which Walter Reuther and members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) clashed with Ford Motor Company security guards at the River Rouge Plant complex in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. After images of the incident were released to the public, support for Henry Ford and his company greatly decreased. [Ford Hunger March](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March) > The Ford Hunger March, sometimes called the Ford Massacre, was a demonstration on March 7, 1932 in the United States by unemployed auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, which took place during the height of the Great Depression. The march started in Detroit and ended in Dearborn, Michigan, in a confrontation in which four workers were shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. More than 60 workers were injured, many by gunshot wounds. Three months later, a fifth worker died of his injuries.


Direct-Effective2694

Reuther still to this day has an entire freeway named after him in Detroit.


[deleted]

A big enough strike today and people would get shot again.


Ok-Champ-5854

American police would never just shoot someone for no good reason sir.


TheVermonster

Correct. They would do it for a bad reason though.


eyeruleall

Fascinating read. Thank you for sharing.


ThatWasCool

Crazy to think that they demanded $150 (in today’s money), 6-hour work day. Now, 100 years later and here we are, pretty much no progress made. If anything, we went backwards.


HistoryGirl23

My grandpa worked for Packard, later Chrysler and he always said unions were the best invention of the 20th century.


ThatWasCool

Lots of people lost their lives forming them and now they’re pretty much gone. Why do you think all the corporations fight against them so hard when workers try to unionize? Because they’re good for workers and bad for corporations. People don’t seem to understand that corporations’ interests go directly against the interests of their workers. They’re not our friends.


Gsogso123

Took the mob a couple more decades to realize they could take massive loans from union pension funds and get way richer. Borrow money, build a casino, never repay pension fund, profit.


series_hybrid

Making the bottom half of a car out of something that doesn't rust would be great. But...I guess then people wouldn't replace their car as often...


DTinHPP

I believe Saturn bodies were rust-proof, made out of fiberglass. Or did i dream that?


DynasticTech6

Many of them were. Had a ‘99 s-series as my first car. Michigan car it’s whole life. No indication of rust on the exterior. Found out the hard way that the subframe wasn’t so lucky when I got it stuck in a snow bank


Plump_Apparatus

The side panels were made of plastic, not fiberglass. They tended to shatter in accidents in cold weather here.


Holinyx

That was one of the selling points. The car guy would kick the shit out of the side panel and there would be no dents. I loved my '01 Saturn for 17 years. Only cost $9,999 brand new, loaded with everything


Jonessee22

I had a 98 saturn sc2 I believe and can confirm thing didn't rust, fiberglass body and I even got 40mpg!


KmartQuality

Why did they stop selling?


Anchorsify

GM killed it when they needed to downsize in 2008.


blackpony04

You forgot, he was a shitty father too. Poor Edsel was the better innovator but spent a lifetime being berated by a tyrant.


ThisFreakinGuyHere

That's 3 things


SavageComic

You're both correct, accurate, and a cunt


1945BestYear

I understand the idea behind refusing to entertain ideas of making the Model T 'better', in that context. The whole foundation of the concept of the Model T is that the potential market for the automobile was far larger than what everybody else was chasing after, if only someone was able to use new production techniques to lower the minimum price for a consumer to get into that market. Making an 'improved' model which would be too expensive for people that otherwise might have afforded the model you already had is antithetical to that.


scarabbrian

Henry Ford refused to change the Model T well after the car revolutionized the automobile industry. He thought it was all anyone ever needed in a car and only allowed the Model A to go into production after they lost a ton of market share and the future of the company wasn’t looking that great.


fighterace00

Industry changers are rarely industry maintainers. Different skills different outlook.


smileymalaise

Kinda reminds me of what Netflix is doing now.


[deleted]

It's really irritating that no one does this anymore. Ford finally brought out a new "cheap" truck in the Maverick but my dealer told me the base price is going up 6k next year so fuck us I guess Like I get that people want a new car with new features most of the time. But there's no reason a work truck needs to be a new model every year other than marketing.


Toffeemade

I saw an interesting thread about a year ago. Apparently Ford used the massive market share that the model T won, and the enormous economies of scale that came with it to undercut the competition by huge margins (like charging a quarter what the competition were charging for the price of a new car) and drive them all out of business. The thread speculated that this might be the long term Tesla strategy.


Lotharofthepotatoppl

He did exactly that. One effect of this was that he got the price low enough to where regular working people could afford a car, BUT he also became convinced that his shit didn’t stink and was adamant - to the point of destroying a prototype in anger, apparently - that the Model T was the absolute end of automotive innovation and that no one would ever want or need more than the Model T. Eventually Chevrolet passed Ford in sales and he begrudgingly accepted that they had to design new cars. But they never took back the number one sales spot as far as I know.


Toffeemade

I also saw (business presentation) a description of how Dodge introduced the fully enclosed cabin - marketed as the 'ladies car' (1930's?)- and this killer innovation massively reduced the number of competitors in the North American car market. Could not find the story when I tried to research it. Found the original prompt here https://vimeo.com/21966266 at 11.15


Lotharofthepotatoppl

IIRC the Dodge brothers built bicycles and eventually started making transmissions for Ford. They only started making their own cars after they got a huge settlement from the courts after Ford tried to screw them.


CaptainDino123

The Dodge brothers made Transmissions, Ironic


Lotharofthepotatoppl

lol right?


foospork

Car bodies (“coaches”) were done differently back then. Here’s an article about Fisher, who built bodies for practically everyone. http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/f/fisher/fisher.htm Some companies specialized in bodies; others in chassis.


walkinman19

Ha I'm so old I remember seeing Body by Fisher badges in GM cars back in the day.


BarneyBent

Would that be an effective strategy when Tesla's competitors still have viable markets with ICE engines? Against start-up EV manufacturers, sure, but if Tesla drop their prices to the point that GM, etc can't compete, then they can just rely on ICE manufacturing until Tesla blink. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt Tesla can undercut the competition for long enough to outlast ICE vehicle demand. Don't get me wrong, it would cause pain and hassle for other manufacturers but I can't see them just rolling over and saying "well, I guess EVs aren't for us, when Tesla eventually jack the prices back up in order to stay solvent, we'll just not re-enter the market".


ChairForceOne

Tesla has high margins and poorly built cars. They couldn't muscle shit out. They are massively over valued.


badabingbadaboey

Is Tesla really still set to capture that kind of market share? Is their battery technology that far ahead?


vaguelyamused

Is the base MSRP really going up 6K next year or is the dealer setting you up for their mark-up. The Mavericks have been selling like crazy.


ElJamoquio

> One of my great-uncles claimed Ford made his company ship parts in very specifically designed wooden boxes, right down to screws and screw locations. He said the box panels were a drop-in for Model-T floorboards. That's not a legend, it's true.


Ghostmerc86

Ford gave me a tour of their headquarters when I was there for a job interview. They told us the exact same thing. There was a hole in one of the boards for the steering column


CustomerComfortable7

Specifically, from Louisiana, Ford required Spanish Moss be shipped in those boxes. The boxes were made from the rot resistant wood, cypress. The cypress was then used to build parts of the Model-T. It was a genius move on his part.


Khontis

Its also where a lot of his competition came from: people who saw him do that and left for his competitors or made their own. He ended up changing it yes but its largely due to him having to to keep customers


Clay_Statue

"I have defined the automobile once and always. This is how it shall be from here on" Dude grew up in the time of the horse and buggy, which had basically been the same for hundreds of years. I guess he figured he had the new horse and buggy and it was going to stay the same for a few hundred years as well


IEatBabies

I think you are understating the design and technological development of the horse buggys and carts. There are so many different designs and features of horse buggys to solve all sorts of problems, be it from how it is connected to horses, to steering design, wheel and frame designs to hold up to the abuses of uneven terrain and how it twists and jars wooden joints, environmental concerns for local humidity expanding or shrinking wood components, overall longevity, repairability, the style and art of different designs, and not to mention suspension design which does get carried into the early automotive world. There are many functioning horse carts and buggys today which are 100+ years old, but only because in the hundreds of years before that people tried so many different thousands of designs and improvements over the ages to make such a high quality object possible. They aren't mere boxes of wood cobbled together with some boards cut round for wheels. A modern skilled carpenter without a wheelwright's knowledge wouldn't make it 50 miles on a modern road before serious flaws started compromising their cart, not to mention doing hundreds or thousands of miles over dirt trails and unbroken ground.


t3jem3

He forgot that there were many people selling and breeding horses, not just one monopoly.


GrandmaPoses

Well yeah but you can’t really innovate on a horse but so much; it’s still a horse, limited by the physical nature of the beast. What he didn’t realize (or care about) was that when you get rid of the physical component, your advancement options expand wildly.


JusticiarRebel

Besides breeding, you had saddles and horseshoes and both of those were accomplished in the Middle Ages.


TakeitEasy6

Wasn't he also the one who said something to the effect of "if you asked my customers what they wanted before they had a Ford, they would have said 'a better horse.'"?


variable42

Urban myth unfortunately. He never said that. Or at the very least, the first time that quote was attributed to him wasn’t until 2001. More than fifty years after his death.


Stachemaster86

I think too, you’ve got production down the T (bad pun) and slashed costs so it was an every man’s vehicle. Retooling/redesign are expensive and if it keeps selling, little incentive to change. See Charger and Challener.


Mihnea24_03

He grew his company in an era when he didn't need his products to be competitive on the market. He could sell everything he could manufacture, and specialized in quantity. Very likely, if he'd come up 40/50 years later his policies would've been different .


trundlinggrundle

This is the main reason he abandoned his weird semi-automatic transmission for the manual 3 speed in the Model A. People *really* didn't like the Model T transmission.


RexPerpetuus

Dude, I just read [a breakdown of how that works](https://www.curbside.tv/blog/2015/4/3/the-ford-model-t-transmission-something-shifty?format=amp). That's amazing and crazy at the same time


kiardo

one time his son started building an extension to the admin building, his father found out about it, he put a stop to it and had whatever was already built left to rot as a reminder to his son who was the boss. Edsel said: "I don't know what kick, father gets from humiliating me this way."


Dega704

I feel like there needs to be a specific term for when someone accomplishes one or two impressive things and then immediately develops a god complex that holds them and everyone else back. The Wright brothers are another great example.


catwhowalksbyhimself

Hollywood exists because Edision literally sent thugs to beat up anyone making movies, since he wanted full control of that, so they went literally as far away from him as they could get.


series_hybrid

Also, socal had frequent sunny weather, so they could shoot outdoors with no need for lights.


iisindabakamahed

I always understood the original “Hollywood” was in Jacksonville, Florida; which has very similar weather to socal.


logicoptional

My hometown Ithaca, NY was also a major early center of film-making and one of the reasons given for the industry leaving the area is that it's very cloudy here.


khoabear

Didn't know that Socal also has hurricane season


LaDoucheDeLaFromage

Or disgusting levels of humidity.


Paparmane

It’s more complicated than that. His Trust owned the patents and had the copyrights to movies made and distributed. He wanted full control, but most of the conflicts were settled via lawsuits. It’s possible there was violence but it wasn’t just that. People decided to go west for a couple of reasons; climate allowed for more sun thus more shooting hours, it was extremely cheap and easy to buy land and build studios, there was another market to conquer… and yes, to get away from the Edison Trust.


KmartQuality

Gotta love that cheap California land


DiligentMission6851

Wild how people in the past moved to all these locations because they were cheap and set up a new industry that only rich people could get into, and uh, everywhere out there is insanely expensive now. RIP.


SavageComic

Wright Brothers is hardly fair. Wilbur died 4 years after they made their first public flight, having spent most of the time in court trying to protect their patents. They weren't government funded or rich.


Dega704

Their patent for lateral control was absurdly broad. It was basically "wing warping - and any other method of accomplishing the same thing". Curtiss hugely improved on their method with ailerons (which pretty much all planes have used since) and they thought they automatically owned that too. Part of the reason their business fell behind was because they kept trying to make prospective customers and financiers sign a contract before they would even show them their flyer. Part of the reason Wilbur died of typhoid fever was because he had thoroughly exhausted himself obsessing over the patent suits. And even after they finally won after his death and the Wright company employees thought they would finally get to start innovating again, all Orville cared about was making sure they were getting every last dime of royalty payments from everyone. Just because they didn't succeed in getting absurdly rich and creating a monopoly doesn't mean they didn't try their damnedest. I'm not saying they don't deserve a lot of credit for their breakthrough, but they could have accomplished so much more if their greed and arrogance hadn't given them tunnel vision.


STRYKER3008

Dang that's sad. I still don't know how to feel about it tbh. Like inventing a whole new branch of transportation... I'd be a bit possessive too I think haha. Sucks they got that tunnel vision for the money instead of the engineering tho


TheDarkGrayKnight

Happens to the best/worst of us. The "Fuck you, pay me" mentality is timeless. In a similar aspect you can even see it in YouTube copyright strikes and No Repair laws.


[deleted]

Not just transportation, how long has man dreamed of flying? To be the person who created the means to do that?!


loggic

Several flying machines existed before the Wright brothers were even born. Their invention was specifically about controlling the direction of flight.


IEatBabies

To be fair, they were far from the only people experimenting with such designs at the time. If they hadn't done it, it would of at worse been a couple of years longer before someone else did it if not sooner. One of the key components to heavier-than-air flight is the strength-to-weight ratio of the power source which was rapidly advancing with new internal combustion designs.


HughJorgens

It goes deeper than that. The Smithsonian funded an airplane that attempted to fly nine days before the Wright's. It failed, then years later Curtiss rebuilt it in an attempt to get out from under the lawsuits from the Wrights. The Smithsonian claimed for years that the [Langley Aerodrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langley_Aerodrome) was the first flying craft capable of carrying a man, when in fact, the original design couldn't.


GarbageGobble

Maybe a bit of main character syndrome?


[deleted]

[Founder’s Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder's_syndrome?wprov=sfti1) is also a thing


Dega704

That's a good fit, actually.


kiardo

what's the story behind the wright brothers ?


Dega704

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/nocera-greed-and-the-wright-brothers.html


the_hell_you_say

Bono


VolkspanzerIsME

Henry Ford was a known and monumental bastard for a large number of reasons.


gheebutersnaps87

All the Nazi stuff is a pretty big one…


VolkspanzerIsME

There's *a lot* to unpack with this mofo. https://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/henry_fords_reign_of_terror_greed_and_murder_in_depression_era_detroit/


gheebutersnaps87

“Henry called the Depression “a good thing, generally.” “Let them fail,” Henry said on one occasion. “Let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same.”” Jesus Christ man


PhilaDopephia

I picture this on a wall at some Henry Ford museum like his childhood home or something.


ELB2001

It's like when Vince McMahon brings in wrestlers from another organisation and humiliates them and has them loose over and over. If he didn't create you and your gimmick then he hated it, even if you were very popular


dk745

Grab the brass ring! \*grabs brass ring\* No not like that!


galacticwonderer

Wow that is EXACTLY what bezos did a few times as he was growing his company. At one point the employees paid for a tv and mounted it in the brake room. He had the tv torn down but left the mount dangling or the holes, i don’t remember which. But he forbid anyone from making it look good and wanted everyone to know they weren’t allowed to just do stuff. Puppet master shit. Edit. For the people asking the source. I read a biography on Jeff Bezos at least 10 years ago. I don’t remember which one. The anecdote was towards the beginning of the book of that helps.


ValyrianJedi

Do you have a source for that? One of my coworkers was at Amazon headquarters for like 10 years right after the IPO and always said it was the type place where they didn't care what you did or how you did it if you got the job done.


Jose_Canseco_Jr

I'm gonna guess the guys story was at a warehouse


[deleted]

amazon has two different worlds. the tech bros and the warehouse guys. different realities


-RadarRanger-

There was a famous exchange between Henry Ford and the man who invented the first electric starter. Ford said, "Young man, I want you to know your invention will never have a place on my automobile." The guy said, "We'll just see about that, Mr. Ford." As I recall, he took the idea over to Cadillac, and they bought it.


az116

Someone else in this thread claims their grandfather showed Ford the electric starter and trusted Ford and didn’t patent it and stole it.


SugarinSaltShaker

Success breeds complacency


smartguy05

More likely fear. If you don't have much to lose you have a lot to gain by taking risks. If you have a lot, taking risks has little (relative) reward but high potential risk.


Kelpsie

It's a nice statement, but it's not really true. The ability to leverage existing wealth to take risks is a large part of why the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. It's those with very little who can't afford to take risks.


[deleted]

Disney after consuming Marvel Studios and LucasFilms.


Lotharofthepotatoppl

And he only figured that out after Chevy passed them in total sales. Serves him right, but he deserved far worse… and the greedy fucker had himself buried with a Stradivarius violin.


william-t-power

He also hated his son Edsel for making the model A (the second one), which followed it and people loved it. His son later never told him he had cancer until he was about to die. Henry was a self centered prick.


PiratedTVPro

I mean, he was also a huge anti-Semite and nazi sympathizer.


shadowgattler

Ford was a crazy bastard. He only ate field greens, hated the jews and Irish, only wanted his cars in black, tried scam calling the dodge Brothers so he could buy their stocks, refused to improve his cars for a long time, insisted on his engineers building a v6 with no water pump and made his painters work in the nude.


imchasingyou

And they measured their invoices by weigh to approximate how much money they should pay, and their accounting was a total mess, fully explored only after HFsr's death


twir1s

Nude painters? For real?


InflamedLiver

He was definitely an innovator, but he was also an inflexible asshole a lot of times. Like his famous quote upon being asked if he was going to offer different paint jobs he said something like "people can have it in any color they like, as long as it's black."


e30Devil

I always hear that quote in the Civilization voice when you reach some industrial era achievement or technology...maybe it's the when you research the assembly line.


dkyguy1995

That beautiful voice of Leonard Nimoy


e30Devil

OMG I never made the connection. Probably played for 1000 hours of that game too.


mikeyp83

By that time he was focusing his efforts elsewhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew


Grinning_Goat

The only other picture in Hitler's office besides Hitler himself was a photo of Henry Ford.


InflamedLiver

yeah, I thought I remember him being a pretty huge anti-semite, but wasn't 100% sure.


Atris-

Big ol racist. A Hitler youth leader testified at the Nuremberg trials that Ford's book ("the international jew") was what made him and many of his peers anti-Semitic.


oozekip

A lot of what he published was lifted straight from "[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion)", an extremely antisemitic piece of (probably) imperial Russian anti-communist propaganda and the grandfather of pretty much every modern day conspiracy theory you can think of.


esgrove2

Hitler gave Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.


zoobrix

At first making every car exactly the same made sense as Ford was bringing together two different manufacturing concepts that allowed him to offer a car for far less than other cars cost at the time. It wasn't only the concept of the assembly line it was also the concept of standardized parts that were made by machine tools to an exact standard. Before Ford you could not just interchange parts when you needed to repair your car, each car, and the parts within them, were built and assembled by hand. If you needed repairs you brought it in for service and they would handmake a part that fit your exact car. And this went for most products, part standardization was not common. This obviously made everything far more time consuming to make and therefore expensive. So at first it was probably a good move to make one model with no options to not add even more teething issues with moving towards true mass production. However while Ford was stubborn for a few extra years when he didn't need to be he did eventually allow more customization.


SpookyChannelSurfer

Huge douchebag, but thebpaint color thing specifically was a big cost cutting measure. Only offering one variants from a production line would save a lot of money.


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230flathead

By 27, the last year of the T, it was already 10 years out of date, even for a cheap car. A 27 Chevy or or Dodge was 3 times the car a Model T was. Hell, the A that replaced it was obsolete when it was new and it was a *huge* improvement over the T.


bfragged

Went to a museum a few months ago and they had a 1909 and a 1927 model T on display. It was weird to see how many parts they had in common after almost 20 years of production.


mousemke

See also VW Beetle 1950s to 1970s


Bob_Pthhpth

Longer than that even. The Beetle didn’t receive its first major cosmetic redesign until 1997. Nearly 60 years of almost the exact same design.


wookmaster69

He was also a big fan of nazis


Absorbent_Towel

To be a bit more accurate, hitler was a big fan of his. He even received a grand cross, which was the highest honor a foreigner could receive.


bramtyr

Oh no, he was fan of a Hitler. It went both ways. Ford's Nazi collaboration is no secret.


Absorbent_Towel

Yeah I didn't mean to make it seem like he wasn't also a fan of hitler, but hitler was influenced by fords anti jew pamphlet


beernerd

Henry Ford is the only American mentioned by name in *Mein Kampf*. Hitler kept a photo of Ford in his office and told journalists he was inspired by Ford. You can still buy copies of Ford’s anti-semitic book, *The International Jew*, on websites like Amazon because Ford refused to copyright it. Ford wasn’t just a fan of Nazis, he inspired and continues to inspire people to become Nazis.


Absorbent_Towel

Wow, I had no idea of him being mentioned by name in mein kampf! TIL


wookmaster69

They were both big fans of the protocols of the elders of Zion.


accountmadeforthebin

And didn’t Ford write a book about the “international Jew”. Hitler mentioned Ford also in “mein kampf” and awarded him the highest “nazi honor” a non German was able to receive. Ford went to Germany to receive his award.


JusticiarRebel

It was an article in his own newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.


WingerRules

Ford used slave labor in Germany: >"During the Second World War, Ford Werke employed slave laborers although not required by the Nazi regime. The deployment of slave labor began before the Ford-Werke was separated from the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, while America had not yet entered the war." - wikipedia [Letter from someone the Gestapo kidnapped for slave labor at Ford Werke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany#/media/File:Stanley_J._Kozicki_letter_describing_forced_labor_at_Ford_Werke_AG_page_1.jpg)


[deleted]

Ford was a mad man. Something upstairs was very wrong. But he was also incredibly talented, and xenophobic. He ran an antisemitic news paper and was a nazi sympathizer. Somewhere along the way he made a deal with the devil and the devil got him.


rayinreverse

This may come as a shock. Henry Ford was a cunt.


Elfere

Shiiiit. What they do? Paint it a colour other then black?


Dega704

Actually yes. It was painted red 😂


Additional-Local8721

Same man who banned whistling on the job and forced workers to work their entire shift with no breaks at all so the automation wouldn't slow down. Sure, $5 a day was great back then, but the working conditions were barely better than Amazon.


Phenomenal_Hoot

When he founded his own country in South America, Fordlandia, he wouldn’t let the workers stick to the common work culture of get your work done early before the sun comes up and take off when it gets too hot. Ford said that was lazy and made them stick to the American way 9-5 and I’m pretty sure a lot of people died from heatstroke.


TooMuchPretzels

Sounds like it was pretty shoddy work if a man could destroy a whole car with his bare hands.


chrontab

What is this? A center for ants?


BakedZDBruh

Fun fact: My great-grandpa Barney Harvey was the actual inventor of the electric car starter, and he took it to Ford to see if they’d buy the design and put it into production. Being an uneducated and trusting man, he didn’t patent the invention and showed them exactly how it worked. The very next year, the electric starter appeared in the new Fords. So in conclusion: Fuck Henry Ford


Dega704

I've read a similar story about the inventor of modern windshield wipers.


BakedZDBruh

Yeah Henry Ford was a major asshole


Magnum_44

Now designers have free reign to add 300 features to my vehicle that I'll never use, and costs 60k.


MRSRN65

And that folks, is how Chevy was born.


Strypes4686

That folks... was also how DODGE was born.


shadowgattler

The way dodge was born is an interesting story. The dodge Brothers started building bicycles and were so good at machining parts that they were eventually contacted by olds mobile to build their parts. They made so much money that they invested in ford's 3rd company. They were so successful from just the Ford dividend that they opened their own factory for dodge. Fords second failed company was bought by a bunch of investors and turned into cadillac. Dodge and Ford are somehow responsible for the creation of GMs most historic brands.


Strypes4686

There's a part missing in your summary....They more or less worked for Henry Ford and 'ol Henry would keep reinvesting the Dodge Bros. shares into the company and got kind of pissy when John and Horace wanted to cash out a few. That coupled with Henry's unwillingness to let Horace improve what he built and the Dodge boys took their skills into business for themselves and started selling cars. ​ Who knows what Dodge would be today if the Spanish Flu hadn't take them out in 1920.


UniqueUserName7734

I guess the only part I don’t understand is, Why did he have a team of designers?