(9 of 9)
Continental Campaign. It was Ben who started the campaign to put out a new Continental because he wanted a prestige car for the company, and he quickly persuaded Billy to join him. Billy was a shrewd ally. Recently, before the formal monthly meeting of the Administrative Committee. Billy buttonholed each member separately and asked: "Don't you think it's a good idea to build a Continental?" Most agreed, although Breech thought Ford ought to stick to money-making products. At the meeting, Billy clinched things by saying: "Nearly all of you favor building a Continental, so why don't you approve it?" They did.
But when Billy got the job of designing it, he was on his own. HF II gave him only one man and said, "Bill, it's your problem." By luring away designers from other departments and hiring them from outside, Billy put together a null special projects department, designed an experimental model, and for a while carefully kept it hidden, even from his brothers. When he showed it off, he got a shock. Brother Ben's designers had been secretly working on a 1956 Lincoln. Says Ernie Breech: "It practically floored Billy, for Ben's looked better than his. Billy took it well, went back to his shop and worked out a new three-eighths scale model. It looks fine."
Battleground Ahead. With this kind of bounce and zest, the top brass looks forward to the fast-approaching day of a buyers' market in cars. They think that will be their chance to make the Ford car once more the No. i seller, knock out Chevrolet. At present, G.M. and Ford are selling all the Chevvys and Fords they can make. Since G.M. has greater productive capacity, it can turn out more Chevvys than Ford can make Fords.
Ford's half-billion in new expansion will change all that, should make Ford and Chewy production facilities equal. (The Ford company, which made a total of 1,678,954 cars and trucks last year, is well behind G.M.'s total production of 2,234,-397). But when the time of production equality comes—and buyers get more choosy—the Ford brothers think they will wrest back the title they lost to Chewy 18 years ago. Said HF II earnestly: "As soon as we can outproduce them, we'll outsell them."
* And to their mother. Mrs. Edsel Ford, and sister, Josephine. Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943; Henry Ford, aging and ailing, lived on till 1947. * The biggest share went to Ford Motor's Secretary James Couzens, later U.S. Senator from Michigan, who got $30 million. The Dodge Brothers, who had taken stock in lieu of payment for some of the engines they supplied Ford, got $25 million, which helped buttress their own famed company. * An act which later cost Ford $9,000,000 to settle Ferguson's patent infringement suit.