The Ford difference: It's personal
More than any other auto company, Ford Motor Co. is an outsized person - a glamorous uncle who has made, lost and regained millions, who is generous if sometimes reckless, who learns from his mistakes.
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Ford enjoys big successes and suffers big failures. Ford's heart beats. Ford has helped to create more African-American millionaires than most entire industries. It makes promises and keeps some of them.
Ford even speaks. Everyone in America knows who said, "You can have any color as long as it's black," or even, "Never complain, never explain."
The original Henry Ford had an optimistic, American vision of what people could become. It was mostly right, and it changed the world. He also had a dark side. But the good sense of America steamrolled his anti-Semitism and his peccadilloes.
Billy Durant is a footnote at General Motors. To most Americans, Walter P. Chrysler is just a name. But 100 years after the founding of Ford Motor Co., young CEO Bill Ford is battling to reshape his company after a wrong turn. (Humans make wrong turns sometimes.)
Ford is on its way to a second hundred years.
And, like a great human, it will prevail.
This very special edition of Automotive News realizes three years of planning, reporting and editing. It became almost the full-time job of Assistant Managing Editor Mary Beth Vander Schaaf, who skillfully and cheerfully worked days, nights and weekends to bring it to you.
She is from Grosse Pointe, home of the glamorous Edsel and Eleanor Ford. Coincidence?
Nah. The history remains personal.
