Know Our History - Henry Ford on the American Experience

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

I have Jewish friends who's parents would never own a Ford for these reasons.

I'd also never buy a Ford for that reason, but I might recognise I've already considered to build a Model T frame replica from scratch as I like its balance of light weight and some decent cross-country ability, intending to fit a small Diesel engine, a conventional transmission (altough the stock semi-automatic one from the Ford Model T is not really bad, in spite of its odd pedal-shifting pattern) and a custom body.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

He didn't invent the production line.

He also wasn't the only Nazi supporter who went on to do well in the US - IBM did quite well out of selling the Nazis colating machines they used to determine who was and who was not Jewish.

Don't neglect to mention Dr. Porsche and the Volkswagen. If you love Fascism and things German uber alles, that's the nationalist people's car for you. Henry Ford may have had his biases and eccentricities but at least he wasn't working for Hitler.

Designing Cars for Hitler: Porsche and Volkswagen's Nazi Roots - SPIEGEL ONLINE

[NeilBlanchard]

Yes, there were a lot of US companies profiting from selling arms to Nazi Germany, including the Bush and Walker families. And IBM and many others.

But Edsel Ford and the grandsons did not agree with Henry Ford on this and other issues. Ford needs to rediscover the design process that led to the Model T. We need to ban planned obsolescence and replace it with improves that raise the efficiency and the durability and the safety of the car.

The other standout cars in addition to the Model T over the 100+ years: the VW Beetle, Fiat 500, Mini Cooper, Citroën 2CV, UrSaab, all the safety design features premiered by Mercedes and Volvo - among others.

Very few cars today come close to the weight, efficiency, durability, simplicity and elegance of design that leads to low cost of ownership and incremental improvement over time.

[Arragonis]

Are we discussing the idea of a car having a long life in production in a stable condition - e.g. Model T, VW Bug, VW Type 2 etc. - or vehicles which last a long time in use without breaking ?

They aren't always the same thing - couple of examples (perhaps not the best ones) - An example of a long lived car could be the Merc 250D - long out of production for newer and flashier models but you would struggle to kill one in everyday use.

At the other end of the scale the 2CV is a very elegant and efficient design intended to be cheap to own and run for the target market. It lasted with some refinements between 1948 and the 1990s - recognisably the same car.

But it was also built down to a price and although the mechanical parts would last well the bodywork disolved around them. This was part of the design though, they would be cheap to more or less be thrown away.

(a slight variation on the 2VC being discarded is that new bodies and chassis are available for them nowadays which means when they do disolve you can rebuild them easily, same for old Land Rovers and not to mention classic (mainly Brit) cars like MGs and the like where complete new bodyshells are being made on a medium / large scale.)

We are expecting car makers to improve things all the time like safety and emissions and economy - stricter standards for all of these things. To do so partly they have to sell cars and make money, and part of that is the "new model year" approach which most of us on EM would ignore anyway, except if a particular year had an efficiency improvement like a longer dinal drive etc.

Apologies, I don't know what the answer is - this kind of just struck me as a related point.

[user removed]

I think we tend to be rather critical here, of those who did not have the advantage of second guessing histroy before it took a terrible change in course. Pop who was on the recieving end of bullets made in war time Nazi Germany while trying to stay alive and dropping bombs all over the country, had a lot of admiration for the pilots who flew into massive bomber formations with thousands of 50 caliber machine guns shooting back at those same German fighter pilots.

How is it that many pilots and soldiers who actually fought against each other can now become friends, while we here, who never participated, decide to become self appointed judges and juries of situations we could not imagine, but so easily and so critically judge.
Henry Ford went bankrupt 3 times before he got to the point where he started to make money building cars. He had to fight the establishment tooth and nail to even get in the game and become competitive. Hardened by failure, then eventual succes, he believed what a hard man tends to believe and to many it ain't pretty.

Hitler took Germany from the ashes of the Versailles treaty to the point where Germany became a world power to be reconned with by any county. Then he took Germany to hell and dragged much of the planet with them.

We blasted Japan with nuclear weapons, but the fire bombing of Dresden killed more people than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I wonder what Germany would have done to Churchill and Bomber Harris if they had won the war.

I woke up at night as a teenager when Pop woke up from one of his nightmares, reliving what we can never comprehend, watching people get incinerated, blasted into a cloud of blood and guts. Death was always close, a mere fraction of a second between a near miss and a direct hit from flack.

Even if you have read a million pages of history, you can not comprehend the fear of almost certain death, but what is even worse is not knowing when it will come, whilel knowing that the odds are 8 to 1 against you ever getting home.

Pop almost never made it to Europe when they encountered icing and thunderstorms ferrying their plane across the North Atlantic in late november. It's best to learn from history and try very hard to avoid repetition of tragedies.

regards
Mech

[TheEnemy]

I recently came to the conclusion that looking back on the way someone acts compaired with what is acceptable today without taking into consideration the conditions and what was acceptable back then distorts ones views, making what can be a great person who did great things into a horible person.

Yes Henry Ford was racist, but at that time racism was the norm and "accepted", it doesn't make it right, but understanding that fact puts it into perspective, times change.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

Yes Henry Ford was racist, but at that time racism was the norm and "accepted", it doesn't make it right, but understanding that fact puts it into perspective, times change.

Racism is quite a generalist definition, which can extend to some racist jokes to hate speech and even engagement in violent acts. Henry Ford openly supported a genocide. His sucess as a businessman is unquestionable, but his engagement into anti-Semitism was frightening. He sponsored an openly anti-Semitic newspaper and even some editions of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion...

[Arragonis]

Anyway as I tapped earlier - are we focussing on long lived cars - that last a long time in use, or long lived cars that last a long time in production, or is it a focus on simpler cars ?

There are quite a few models out of production which can more or less be built at home from the shell upwards including the Mini, 2CV, Renault 4, Austin 7, old Land Rovers, new Land Rovers and the Model T - there is a place in the UK (can't find the link just now) that builds them from newly made chassis.

Its a thought - own the same car for life, replace anything from service parts to the whole shell when they fall apart

[Frank Lee]

No, we are focused on snowblowers and pickups.

[NeilBlanchard]

What lessons do you draw from the design of the Model T and Ford the company?