The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

it out privately that there would be criminal as well as civil suits and that a 
man buying a Ford car might as well be buying a ticket to jail. We answered 
with an advertisement for which we took four pages in the principal newspa-
pers all over the country. We set out our case—we set out our confidence in 
victory—and in conclusion said:
In conclusion we beg to state if there are any prospective automobile buy-
ers who are at all intimidated by the claims made by our adversaries 
that we will give them, in addition to the protection of the Ford Motor 
Company with its some $6,000,000.00 of assets, an individual bond 
backed by a Company of more than $6,000,000.00 more of assets, so 
that each and every individual owner of a Ford car will be protected 
until at least $12,000,000.00 of assets have been wiped out by those 
who desire to control and monopolize this wonderful industry.

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Starting the Real Business  •  45
The bond is yours for the asking, so do not allow yourself to be sold infe-
rior cars at extravagant prices because of any statement made by this 
“Divine” body.
N. B.—This fight is not being waged by the Ford Motor Company without 
the advice and counsel of the ablest patent attorneys of the East and 
West.
We thought that the bond would give assurance to the buyers—that they 
needed confidence. They did not. We sold more than eighteen thousand 
cars—nearly double the output of the previous year—and I think about fifty 
buyers asked for bonds—perhaps it was less than that.
As a matter of fact, probably nothing so well advertised the Ford car and 
the Ford Motor Company as did this suit. It appeared that we were the under 
dog and we had the public’s sympathy. The association had seventy million 
dollars—we at the beginning had not half that number of thousands. I never 
had a doubt as to the outcome, but nevertheless it was a sword hanging over 
our heads that we could as well do without. Prosecuting that suit was prob-
ably one of the most shortsighted acts that any group of American business 
men has ever combined to commit. Taken in all its sidelights, it forms the 
best possible example of joining unwittingly to kill a trade. I regard it as most 
fortunate for the automobile makers of the country that we eventually won, 
and the association ceased to be a serious factor in the business. By 1908, 
however, in spite of this suit, we had come to a point where it was possible 
to announce and put into fabrication the kind of car that I wanted to build.

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47
4
The Secret of Manufacturing 
and Serving
This chapter contrasts a continuous search for new and better ways to do 
things against the inertia that might come from an initial success. This 
includes benchmarking, as practiced by Ford when he noticed the enor-
mous strength of vanadium steel from a French car that was destroyed in 
a race. His later practice was to obtain at least one of every car ever made 
to identify best practices he could apply to his own products.
* * *
Now I am not outlining the career of the Ford Motor Company for any per-
sonal reason. I am not saying: “Go thou and do likewise.” What I am trying 
to emphasize is that the ordinary way of doing business is not the best way. 
I am coming to the point of my entire departure from the ordinary methods. 
From this point dates the extraordinary success of the company.
We had been fairly following the custom of the trade. Our automobile 
was less complex than any other. We had no outside money in the concern. 
But aside from these two points we did not differ materially from the other 
automobile companies, excepting that we had been somewhat more success-
ful and had rigidly pursued the policy of taking all cash discounts, putting 
our profits back into the business, and maintaining a large cash balance. 
We entered cars in all of the races. We advertised and we pushed our sales. 
Outside of the simplicity of the construction of the car, our main difference in 
design was that we made no provision for the purely “pleasure car.” We were 
just as much a pleasure car as any other car on the market, but we gave no 
attention to purely luxury features. We would do special work for a buyer, 
and I suppose that we would have made a special car at a price. We were a 
prosperous company. We might easily have sat down and said: “Now we have 
arrived. Let us hold what we have got.”

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48  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
Indeed, there was some disposition to take this stand. Some of the stock-
holders were seriously alarmed when our production reached one hundred 
cars a day. They wanted to do something to stop me from ruining the com-
pany, and when I replied to the effect that one hundred cars a day was only 
a trifle and that I hoped before long to make a thousand a day, they were 
inexpressibly shocked and I understand seriously contemplated court action. 
If I had followed the general opinion of my associates I should have kept the 
business about as it was, put our funds into a fine administration building, 
tried to make bargains with such competitors as seemed too active, made 
new designs from time to time to catch the fancy of the public, and generally 
have passed on into the position of a quiet, respectable citizen with a quiet, 
respectable business.
The temptation to stop and hang on to what one has is quite natural. I can 
entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life 
of ease. I have never felt the urge myself but I can comprehend what it is—
although I think that a man who retires ought entirely to get out of a business. 
There is a disposition to retire and retain control. It was, however, no part 
of my plan to do anything of that sort. I regarded our progress merely as an 
invitation to do more—as an indication that we had reached a place where 
we might begin to perform a real service. I had been planning every day 
through these years toward a universal car. The public had given its reactions 
to the various models. The cars in service, the racing, and the road tests gave 
excellent guides as to the changes that ought to be made, and even by 1905 
I had fairly in mind the specifications of the kind of car I wanted to build. 
But I lacked the material to give strength without weight. I came across that 
material almost by accident.
In 1905 I was at a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up 
and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our “Model K”—the high-
powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we 
knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It 
was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I 
gave the stem to my assistant.
“Find out all about this,” I told him. “That is the kind of material we ought 
to have in our cars.”
He found eventually that it was a French steel and that there was vanadium 
in it. We tried every steel maker in America—not one could make vanadium 
steel. I sent to England for a man who understood how to make the steel com-
mercially. The next thing was to get a plant to turn it out. That was another 
problem. Vanadium requires 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The ordinary fur-
nace could not go beyond 2,700 degrees. I found a small steel company in 
Canton, Ohio. I offered to guarantee them against loss if they would run a 
heat for us. They agreed. The first heat was a failure. Very little vanadium 

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The Secret of Manufacturing and Serving  •  49
remained in the steel. I had them try again, and the second time the steel 
came through. Until then we had been forced to be satisfied with steel run-
ning between 60,000 and 70,000 pounds tensile strength. With vanadium, 
the strength went up to 170,000 pounds.