For the first time ever the U.S. auto industry has a tsar: broad-shouldered, 6-ft., Ernest Carlton Kanzler, high-voltage president-on-leave of car-financing Universal Credit Corp. The scepter was handed to him by War Boss Don Nelson, and with it went the huge job of converting the auto industry to 100% war work.
Both Washington and Detroit agreed Nelson had picked no mere throne-warmer. Kanzler started off as a Detroit lawyer in 1915, moved into the Ford orbit a year later when he and Edsel Ford courted (and later married) sisters. With ack-ack rapidity, Kanzler became Ford Motor Co. production manager, then director,...