AUTOS: Ford on the Road Back

Spry, dry Henry Ford is again shaking up his fabulous empire. After 16 years of trying newfangled ideas, the sum of the evidence is that the Ford Motor Co. is going back to first principles.

Quietly eased out of the company were three top Ford men who have long espoused the newfangled ideas which old-fashioned Henry Ford has never completely accepted. The three: stocky, balding Laurence Spence Sheldrick, who came to Ford 20 years ago and has long worked as chief engineer; lean, sandy-haired Eugene Turrenne Gregorie, boss of the body-design division; quiet, patient Cornelius Willett Van Ranst, who helped develop the Ford airplane motor which now powers Ford-made tanks.

Project One. Henry Ford, man of one main idea, has always believed that automobiles are merely means of transportation. They should be mass-produced cheaply, without eye-catching gewgaws, and sold cheaply. He has little regard for the public’s fickle taste and fashions. Once he said: “Give them any color they want as long as it’s black.” Stubbornly sticking to these ideas, he continued to turn out his Model T until it was hopelessly obsolete. Up-&-coming Chevrolet—and the modernizing influence of his late son Edsel—forced him to junk Model T in 1927. By then he had lost a big chunk of the cheap-car market. He has never regained it. From then on Edsel’s influence caused the Ford Co. to cater to the public. Edsel established the styling division—Fords had been designed by Detroit’s Briggs Manufacturing Co. up till then-made Fords slicker, more eye-pleasing. He launched the Zephyr and the luxurious Lincoln-Continental. With his death (TIME, June 7) all this was bound to change. The dropping of the three Ford men showed how far the change has gone. They were the last of the tight little group Edsel had formed to carry out his newfangled ideas.

Henry Ford kept his shrewd mouth shut clam-tight about the changes. But many a motor-wise man made good guesses. Most likely: when auto production is resumed, Ford will drop its Zephyr and Lincoln-Continental lines; will turn its designing job over to outsiders again; will concentrate on turning out frill-free cars cheaper and faster than anyone else. In effect, the Lizzie would again become a kind of family jeep.

Henry Ford’s reasoning—if this is it—is obvious: car buyers may be more interested in getting places than in getting chromium cigaret lighters.

Project Two. Last week Henry Ford was busy on another long-range project, one perhaps even more important. He was grooming his tall, handsome grandson, Henry Ford II, 26, to fill his own quick-moving shoes—some day. When Edsel Ford died, Henry II was rounding out his second year in the Navy as a lieutenant. Mindful of the some $4,000,000,000 in war contracts held by the Ford Co.—and of the 80 years of its president—the Navy released Henry II from active duty so he could resume his job of learning how to run the empire. Six days a week he gets up at 6 a.m., is at the Rouge plant by 8. There, under the wing of Ford’s right-hand man, aide-de-camp, shadow and bodyguard, bantam-sized Harry Bennett, young Henry is learning his job. He gets other frequent lessons from Ford’s production boss, white-crested Charles E. Sorensen. Henry II puts in a ten-to twelve-hour day, finds little time for golf (he shoots in the nineties) or to take pictures with his six-year-old second-hand camera. Otherwise he has no hobbies, explains : “There is nothing that I ache to do, for I learned long ago you are too easily disappointed by some change in plans.”

There is only one plan for him now—to get production know-how. That was what built the Ford empire, and canny old Henry is dead sure it will keep it together.