October 2, 2006
Henry Ford Posted by John Steele Gordon at 05:30 PM EST Joshua Zeitz writes, “One wonders what Henry Ford would do. Innovator that he was, I’d like to imagine he’d see the future for what it is, and insist on retooling the American auto market for the production of lighter, more fuel-efficient models.” Henry Ford was surely an innovator—and we still live with the monumental consequences of his innovations. But he was quite as stubbornly unyielding as he was innovative. Having made one of the world’s great fortunes with the Model T, he flatly refused to change it in any way, shape, or form, insisting it was perfect. He confined innovation to manufacturing and to personnel policies after 1908. His crystal ball was more than a little clouded by the 1920s. When the Model T was getting more and more technologically obsolete, Edsel Ford had a new model car made up without his father’s knowledge. When Henry saw it, he took a sledgehammer to it and destroyed it. It was only when he was confronted with acres of unsold Model T’s and plummeting profits that he finally, much too late, conceded that the company’s business model no longer worked. Ford shut down for 18 months as it retooled to produce the Model A, lost its lead to General Motors, and never really recovered until Henry died in 1947 and Henry Ford II took over. That does not, I think, make a resurrected Henry Ford a likely candidate to lead the American automobile industry out of the wilderness. Joshua Zeitz is a good deal more certain of the future than I am (perhaps he’s seen a study, so he knows what it will be). While the American legacy automobile industry must surely change fundamentally, that will require a new business model on the part of the UAW as well as GM, Ford, and Chrysler. As for what cars should be manufactured, I’d prefer to let the American people decide what cars they want.
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