The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (16 page)

Ford, Cooper, Huff, and Oldfield took turns test-driving the racer in the weeks before the big contest. The 999was even shipped to Ohio for a race in mid-October. It was agreed that Oldfield got more speed out of the 999than any of the others, so he was chosen to drive in the Challenge Cup. Then, the two leaders of the racing team had a falling out, and Ford ended his business relationship with Cooper by selling his financial interest in the race cars. According to a letter from Clara Ford to her brother in late October, Ford sold to his associate when he uncovered some “dirty tricks” in which his partner “was looking out for Cooper and Cooper only.” “I am glad we are rid of him,” Clara confessed with obvious relief. “He thinks too much of low down women to suit me.” Ford agreed to remain on board, however, to assist with the big race.
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On October 25, after four preliminary races for smaller vehicles, the prestige event of the day began as four drivers entered the Challenge Cup, a five-mile race. The field consisted of Winton, driving the Winton Bullet; his business manager, William B. Shanks, in a modified model called the Winton Pup; a racer named Buckman in the Geneva Steamer; and the unknown youth Barney Oldfield at the tiller of the Ford 999.

Under this pressure, fears for Oldfield's safety suddenly surfaced. “One of my friends came up to me just before the race and said, ‘You better be careful, Barney; you're liable to get killed,’ ” Oldfield recalled. “‘I might as well be dead as dead broke,’ I answered.” Even Ford caught a case of the jitters. Believing that Oldfield was risking his life because of his lack of experience, he urged him to stand aside and let someone else drive. But Oldfield laughed off such concerns. Ford reported, “As he took his seat [for the big race], while I was cranking the car for the start, he remarked cheerily: ‘Well, this chariot may kill me, but they will say afterward that I was going like hell when she took me over the bank.’ ” Lee Cuson, a mechanic who was helping with the racer, discovered a potential disaster in a prerace inspection of the car: a six-inch bolt had worked itself completely loose from the gear housing in the rear end, a problem that would have wrecked the vehicle in a short time. “Mr. Ford was leaning on the rail of the fence,” Cuson reported. “He hopped over the fence and we replaced the bolt together. He was grease up to his elbows with me.”
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The race began on an auspicious note for the Ford team as Oldfield accidentally turned a stumble into an advantage. He lagged behind the
other drivers as they moved their cars toward the starting tape, and thus was forced to accelerate in order to pull even. In Oldfield's words, “I had to put on so much speed to catch up with the field that when we all crossed the tape together I was moving much faster than anyone else. That gave me a better start.” Oldfield shot into the lead quickly, and his full-throttle style kept him there. Later, he offered a gripping description of his first race as seen from the driver's seat of the 999:

Oldfield held a substantial lead at the end of the first mile. Winton used his driving experience to narrow the gap gradually between them. By the third mile, however, the Winton Bullet fell back with mechanical difficulties as its engine began to misfire, and it quit the race entirely on the fourth mile. Oldfield lapped one of his remaining opponents, and nearly lapped the other as he sped to a convincing victory. Moreover, his time of 5:28 for five miles set an American speed record. Hundreds of spectators rushed onto the field, hoisted the beaming, grimy young driver onto their shoulders, and carried him around to cheers, whistles, applause, and the exploding flash powder of photographers. Even Ford was swept up in the moment. “Mr. Ford rushed out on the track at the conclusion of the race,” Oldfield related. “Coming over to me, he shouted, ‘I'll build another car for you, Barney, and we'll challenge the world with it.’ ”
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After Oldfield's retirement from active racing, he described the summons
from Cooper bringing him to the Manufacturer's Challenge Cup race as “the letter that changed my whole life.” “The afternoon of October 25, 1902 will be my red-letter day forever,” Oldfield confessed. “Later on I was to win bigger races, to get more publicity, perhaps, but not the same thrill that came to me then.” He always cherished his early association with Henry Ford and believed that it had launched both their careers. “A few years later I had managed to keep pace with him in fame, though not in dollars,” Oldfield later wrote of the race. “Mr. Ford, by virtue of his building a car for the masses, had become leader of the automobile industry; I held the title of master driver of the world.”
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As for Ford, he also understood the significance of the Challenge Cup victory and took immediate advantage. After a disgruntled Winton promised to build a faster car and recapture the speed record, Ford summoned reporters. “If Mr. Winton does lower this time, I'll build another machine that will go him one better if I have to design a cylinder as big as a hogshead,” he declared. “I am bound to keep the record in Detroit.” But despite such determined rhetoric, this master of publicity realized that racing had already fulfilled its larger purpose. The Ford-Oldfield victory, having splashed his name before the public as a skilled automaker, served as a springboard to launch him back into his real field of interest—building a commercial car. In a frank assessment of the Challenge Cup race, Ford asserted, “The ‘999’ did what it was intended to do: it advertised the fact that I could build a fast motor car. A week after the race I formed the Ford Motor Company.”
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Ford's racing career, however, was not quite over. A little more than a year later, in January 1904, he once again took advantage of the sport's capacity to attract publicity. Having resumed work on commercial motor vehicles, Ford decided that his new company's four-cylinder model, which he had dubbed the Model B, needed a boost. “Winning a race or making a record was then the best kind of advertising,” Ford recalled years later. So he reacquired the old Arrow racer from Tom Cooper—it had been wrecked in a 1903race—and rebuilt it. Ford announced that the vehicle would be outfitted with a Model B engine, and that it would break the world's record for the mile. Moreover, he picked a theatrical venue that would have done Barney Oldfield proud. He chose to accomplish this feat just northeast of Detroit, on the ice-covered surface of Lake St. Clair. Detroit newspapers featured stories on the upcoming event, and the Hotel Chesterfield, located close to the race site on the lake, provided additional advertisement by distributing handbills. What unfolded was a prototypical publicity stunt.
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Assisted by Harold Wills and Spider Huff, Ford made some modifications on the Arrow—they installed a V-shaped fuel tank and a bullet-shaped
water tank on the front of the racer, above the engine, and replaced the old tiller with a steering wheel located on the left side behind a new “blast breaker” windshield—and shipped the vehicle to the New Baltimore powerhouse at Lake St. Clair. He hired a team of local farmers to remove the snow from a path four miles long and fifteen feet wide on the icy surface of the lake. He then had them haul cinders from the powerhouse and spread them on the ice, hoping that the tiny, hot nuggets would melt into the surface just enough to provide traction for the racer's tires. On January 9, around noon, Ford, Wills, and Huff wheeled the vehicle onto the lake surface. The weather was so bitterly cold that the car's intake manifold had been wrapped in burlap to keep it from freezing. Hot water was poured into the engine's cooling system while Huff used a plumber's blowtorch to warm the engine parts. After a brief preliminary ride, Ford reported that he was having trouble keeping his foot on the accelerator because the car bounced when it hit fissures in the ice. They decided that during the time trial Huff would crouch on the floorboards next to Ford and hold the gas pedal down with his hand so the driver could concentrate on steering.

A crowd gathered along the makeshift racetrack. Locals eager to witness this unusual display were there, along with many of Ford's associates and his family from Detroit, including Clara and Edsel. Finally, the Arrow made its run. With Ford steering grimly and Huff holding on for dear life as he pressed the accelerator to the floor, they went flying down the track. According to the accepted plan of procedure, the first two miles were for acceleration, the third mile would be timed for the record, and the last mile would allow for slowing down. As Ford and Huff went hurtling down the ice, they twice grazed the snow embankments while gathering speed. Ford steadied the racer, however, and they hit the third mile at top speed. After slowing the vehicle to a stop over the fourth mile, the driving team was given the incredible news: the racer had completed the third mile in thirty-six seconds, which meant that it had been going an astonishing hundred miles an hour. This shattered the existing record of seventy-seven miles per hour.
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Years later, Ford recalled his misgivings as he began this unusual, and dangerous, undertaking on Lake St. Clair:

The Detroit newspapers amply repaid Ford for his risk with much favorable commentary. Describing the world record run as “the wildest ride in the history of automobiling,” the
Tribune
breathlessly depicted the scene: “Humped over his steering wheel, the tremendous speed throwing the machine in zigzag fashion across the fifteen-foot roadway, Ford was taking chances that no man, not even that specialist in averted suicide, Barney Old-field, had dared to tempt.” Ford's feat was so dumbfounding, according to the Detroit
News,
that “even the most enthusiastic supporters of American speed machines admitted that they would like to see further proof before accepting the figures.”
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Ford milked the incident for all it was worth. His new company immediately launched an advertising campaign that trumpeted “World's Mile Straightaway Record Broken by a FORD MACHINE.” Once again, he had proved the power of publicity in America's new mass culture. It was a power that he would use frequently in the future.
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Henry Ford put his newfound celebrity to use. Drawing upon the favorable publicity surrounding his racing successes, he worked to clothe himself once again in the more familiar guise of an automobile manufacturer. He returned to the old problem that had haunted his failed efforts of the late 1890s—finding investors—only this time he had additional leverage. Newspapers noted, “Mr. Ford is one of the best known auto men in the middle west,” and magazines proclaimed, “Ford Is King.” For thousands of citizens in Detroit, and, indeed, throughout the nation, who read about such racing exploits, the Ford name was now associated with a winner.
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Ford was determined to overcome his earlier failures and bring a viable vehicle into the commercial market. The problem, as his earliest disappointments had demonstrated, lay in finding the right kind of investors: capitalists who would be sympathetic to his vision, patient enough to put up with his perfectionist streak, and willing to allow him to control and direct the company with little outside interference. With a typical combination of big ideas and stubborn independence, Henry Ford set out to be a successful entrepreneur. It was probably his last chance.

Ford actually began casting about for new sources of capital for manufacturing early in 1902, a few months after his first victory over Alexander Winton. Though to outsiders he seemed consumed by racing fever, such was not the case. After the collapse of the Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company, he had continued to develop ideas for a passenger car. Initially, his hopes were frustrated, as many Detroit businessmen, aware of his two earlier failures, shied away from financial involvement with the maverick automaker.