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Walker's first product was the '49 Ford —the company's first completely redesigned postwar model—and it was an immediate hit. The long, graceful lines have proved so popular that the company will not make a complete body change until the '56 Ford (already mocked up). However, the engine for next year's Ford has been redesigned to step it up from no to 125 h.p.
With the empire in top shape at home, the new management went to work to cure the ills of its outposts abroad (its. companies are usually 60% owned by Ford and 40% by foreign nationals). Some plants had been bombed and all were hampered by currency restrictions. But most of them are now doing fine. British Ford cars (paced by the fast-selling Zephyr, which won in its class in Europe's tough Monte Carlo rally this year) rank third in popularity in England (after Austin and Morris). Ford of Germany's squat, square Taunus is the fourth-best seller in West Germany. Ford of France is still losing money. To rescue it, the company recently sent over a new manager, Jack Reith, 38, one of a group of ex-Wright Field statistical control experts who became known as Ford's "whiz kids." Whiz Kid Reith, says HF II, "will put Ford of France in the black if anybody can."
Rich Reward. Trie management team that put the whole works in the black is getting rewards commensurate with its achievement. To get the new men the Ford company wanted—and to keep valuable old hands from being lured away—the Ford brothers let the top brass write out their own incentive plan. A new company, Dearborn Motors, Inc., was set up by the executives as the selling agent for tractors, and the stock was split among Breech, former Sales Manager Jack Davis, Production Boss Del Harder, Labor Boss John Bugas, Ford Division Boss Crusoe and eight others.
The Ford company will soon buy up the stock of Dearborn Motors at a price which will give the holders huge capital gains taxable at only 26%. As for Breech, whose 20% of Dearborn stock is the biggest bloc, his investment will bring him a fortune so that he can retire any time he wishes, though he shows no sign of doing so.
"Health Is Catching." Henry, Benson and Billy Ford are not yet ready to run their company alone, even though they have been training for the job most of their lives. When they visited their grandfather as children, he taught them the joys of simple things, let them sleep in a barn because he thought that was a thrill every child should have, took them hunting birds' nests and tramping through his fields. He dinned into them pithy saws ("Health is catching") which extolled clean living and hard work. He and son Edsel saw to it that their toys were useful, mechanical things. Billy, who looks most like his grandfather and inherited most of his zest for tinkering with engines, got a midget racer when he was only 14. Though father Edsel put a governor on it to hold it down to 40 m.p.h., Billy found a way to remove it,, and roared around the Ford test track at breakneck speed. None of the brothers ever got into the usual adolescent scrapes; they were too closely guarded because of the family's fear of kidnapers.