Wheels: Early Ford

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.” Henry Ford more succinctly said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” And he would know. While history rewards Henry Ford with brilliance as an inventor, businessman, industrialist, and car manufacturer, it generally leaves out the winding path it took him to arrive at automotive greatness. History is also largely quiet about some of his more extreme social opinions and experiments, but we’ll stick with cars, here. Let’s start with a question; what do Ford and Cadillac have in common? Read on.

Young Henry Ford was spending most of his time in the small machine shop he assembled by the time he was 12 years old. He constructed his first steam engine at 15 in 1878, but built his first car, called the Quadricycle, years later in 1896. This new contraption caught the eye of several investors who named Mr. Ford the chief engineer in charge of the newly formed Detroit Automobile Co. on Aug. 5, 1899. Unfortunately, by January 1901, the business was declared unsustainable after producing 10 delivery trucks. Henry blamed low quality and high costs for the failure.