The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Quality and Reliability Are Key Selling Points
Ford now reiterates that quality and reliability, as opposed to obsolescence 
(and especially planned obsolescence), are key selling points. The editor 
recalls, for example, seeing Christmas ornaments with a particular year 
on them, and the seller’s obvious intention was that they would be unus-
able in the future. It is doubtful that any but the least intelligent and least 
discerning customers bought even one.
Planned obsolescence brings to mind the slogan “Ending is better than 
mending” of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which Henry Ford is 
God and My Life and Work is the Bible. This section of Chapter 3 shows 
very explicitly, however, that Ford did not think that a customer who 
bought a durable item from him should ever have to buy another.
* * *
My associates were not convinced that it was possible to restrict our cars to 
a single model. The automobile trade was following the old bicycle trade, in 
which every manufacturer thought it necessary to bring out a new model 
each year and to make it so unlike all previous models that those who had 
bought the former models would want to get rid of the old and buy the new. 
That was supposed to be good business. It is the same idea that women sub-
mit to in their clothing and hats. That is not service—it seeks only to provide 
something new, not something better. It is extraordinary how firmly rooted is 
the notion that business—continuous selling—depends not on satisfying the 
customer once and for all, but on first getting his money for one article and 
then persuading him he ought to buy a new and different one. The plan which 
I then had in the back of my head but to which we were not then sufficiently 
advanced to give expression, was that, when a model was settled upon then 
every improvement on that model should be interchangeable with the old 
model, so that a car should never get out of date. It is my ambition to have 
every piece of machinery, or other non-consumable product that I turn out, 
so strong and so well made that no one ought ever to have to buy a second 
one. A good machine of any kind ought to last as long as a good watch.
In the second year we scattered our energies among three models. We made 
a four-cylinder touring car, “Model B,” which sold for two thousand dollars; 
“Model C,” which was a slightly improved “Model A” and sold at fifty dollars 
more than the former price; and “Model F,” a touring car which sold for a 

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Starting the Real Business  •  41
thousand dollars. That is, we scattered our energy and increased prices—and 
therefore we sold fewer cars than in the first year. The sales were 1,695 cars.
That “Model B”—the first four-cylinder car for general road use—had to 
be advertised. Winning a race or making a record was then the best kind 
of advertising. So I fixed up the “Arrow,” the twin of the old “999”—in fact 
practically remade it—and a week before the New York Automobile show 
I drove it myself over a surveyed mile straightaway on the ice. I shall never 
forget that race. The ice seemed smooth enough, so smooth that if I had called 
off the trial we should have secured an immense amount of the wrong kind 
of advertising, but instead of being smooth, that ice was seamed with fis-
sures which I knew were going to mean trouble the moment I got up speed. 
But there was nothing to do but go through with the trial, and I let the old 
“Arrow” out. At every fissure the car leaped into the air. I never knew how it 
was coming down. When I wasn’t in the air, I was skidding, but somehow I 
stayed top side up and on the course, making a record that went all over the 
world! That put “Model B” on the map—but not enough on to overcome the 
price advances. No stunt and no advertising will sell an article for any length 
of time. Business is not a game. The moral is coming.
Our little wooden shop had, with the business we were doing, become 
totally inadequate, and in 1906 we took out of our working capital sufficient 
funds to build a three-story plant at the corner of Piquette and Beaubien 
streets—which for the first time gave us real manufacturing facilities. We 
began to make and to assemble quite a number of the parts, although still we 
were principally an assembling shop. In 1905–1906 we made only two mod-
els—one the four-cylinder car at $2,000 and another touring car at $1,000, 
both being the models of the previous year—and our sales dropped to 1,599 
cars.
Some said it was because we had not brought out new models. I thought 
it was because our cars were too expensive—they did not appeal to the 95 
per cent. I changed the policy in the next year—having first acquired stock 
control. For 1906–1907 we entirely left off making touring cars and made 
three models of runabouts and roadsters, none of which differed materially 
from the other in manufacturing process or in component parts, but were 
somewhat different in appearance. The big thing was that the cheapest car 
sold for $600 and the most expensive for only $750, and right there came the 
complete demonstration of what price meant. We sold 8,423 cars—nearly 
five times as many as in our biggest previous year. Our banner week was that 
of May 15, 1908, when we assembled 311 cars in six working days. It almost 
swamped our facilities. The foreman had a tallyboard on which he chalked 
up each car as it was finished and turned over to the testers. The tallyboard 
was hardly equal to the task. On one day in the following June we assembled 
an even one hundred cars.

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42  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
In the next year we departed from the programme that had been so suc-
cessful and I designed a big car—fifty horsepower, six cylinder—that would 
burn up the roads. We continued making our small cars, but the 1907 panic 
and the diversion to the more expensive model cut down the sales to 6,398 
cars.