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"Of course, in the Ford family, everyone thinks he's a stylist. Ben is perhaps the most serious. Henry will give you a hard time on everything and usually does. We are all reasonably opinionated. We agree on policy matters, but when we get into operational matters we disagree quite violently at times. But on one thing we all agree: what we do make, we want to be first with." Score Card. In their burning desire to be first, the brothers and their management team not only saved the company; they transformed and expanded it in a way that would have dazzled even Old Henry. Last week, as the Ford company celebrated its 50th anniversary, the six-year comeback was best measured in the cold cash of profits. Although Ford still keeps its finances secret, enough information was let out by the family to give the U.S. business world, for the first time, an accurate appraisal of the empire's financial position. * Over the past six years, the company's net profits after taxes totaled $870 million (see table), more than the entire worth of the company when young Henry took over. To the thousands of people invited to Dearborn for the anniversary celebration, there were many other things about the new empire which the three brothers were proud to talk about — or show off.
Among them: ¶ Ford Motor Co. has spent $900 million postwar, much of it from profits, for new plants and modernization. It will spend $500 million more in the next two years to boost its present car-making capacity of 2,378,000 a year by another 30%. The new plants will span the continent: a $100 million assembly plant near San Francisco, a $75 million plant near Louisville, and a $90.0 million one at Mahwah, NJ. Other millions will be spent to almost double the facilities of present plants in Cleveland and Cincinnati, retool a tank plant at Livonia, Mich, for auto-transmission production.
¶ In Dearborn, a new $80 million Engineering & Research Laboratory was opened, giving Ford its first research facilities as up-to-date as G.M.'s. In it, hundreds of scientists and engineers will not only seek ways to improve cars, but will work on pure research. ¶ A new Continental is tentatively scheduled for 1956 to try to recapture the prestige of the old Lincoln Continental, which many automobile buffs still consider the best-looking U.S. car ever made. ¶A new hard-top convertible, the Syrtis, is also scheduled for '56. Its metal top slides into the luggage compartment.
String Saver. As part of the anniversary celebration, the Ford family also formally opened to historians an amazing collection of personal possessions which Old Henry had gathered at Fair Lane, his huge, grey stone mansion, not far from the Rouge plant. After Mrs. Ford died in 1950, the family sent a crew of archivists to look through the memorabilia stored there. They were astounded by what they found. Some of the 55 rooms in the mansion were so crammed with clocks, rare books, cameras, music boxes, files, unpublished photographs and crates of papers that the doors could hardly be opened.
Henry Ford never threw anything away. Fair Lane's store will not only enrich future biographies of Ford; it is also a great hoard of source material on the history of the auto age. Archivists have still studied only a tiny part of the collection.