Ferrari vs. Lamborghini, Mitsubishi vs Subaru, BMW vs. Mercedes… the list goes on.
"Wait, wait.
How 'bout we settle this on the blacktop huh?"
There's about as many automotive rivalries as there are cars… and they all had to start
somewhere.
In fact, the first rivalry in American automotive history- a rivalry that's still alive today-
dates back to detroit as early as 1900.
Today on Wheelhouse we're talking about the strange origins of Dodge vs Ford.
John and Horace Dodge were born in Niles, Michigan about 200 miles west of Detroit,
a city they would help turn into an automotive Mecca.
Much like my own dad, their father was teaching them to be machinists.
Horace invented a dirt proof ball bearing and shared the patent credit with his brother.
The red-headed Dodge bros were super tight, and a had a twin-like bond despite the 4 year
age difference.
They started their own shop building bikes and automotive components, until they got
so much business building car parts that they ditched the bikes and just focused completely
on cars.
A guy named Ransom Olds employed the Dodge brothers to build engines and transmissions
for his new automobile company: Oldsmobile.
Ransom needed some good machinists to get that done, and the Dodge brothers were really,
really good machinists.
The partnership between Olds and the Dodge brothers made them pretty wealthy, but the
Dodge brothers were just getting started.
They wanted to grow their newfound money by investing in more companies.
Meanwhile, a 33 year old Henry Ford was also pursuing his passion of engineering and fabrication.
Like the Dodge brothers, Ford was born in Michigan and worked as a machinist.
And like the Dodge brothers, Ford quit his day job at the Edison Illuminating Company.
In 1896 Ford completed work of his first vehicle, the Quadricycle.
Ford opened his first business, the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899, it was the first
automaker with headquarters in Detroit.
Unfortunately, it only lasted two years.
Today, we think of Henry Ford as a marketing genius who brought cars to the masses...
But the Ford of 1899?
Not so much.
Back then Henry was an engineer, a brilliant one, the kind of engineer who forgot to tell
people to buy his cars.
The Detroit Automobile Company went belly up in a matter of months.
But Henry didn't give up.
Two years later in 1901, He built a racecar to prove his worth as a car designer.The two
cylinder racer he built set a speed record at a horse track, a feat for which Henry was
awarded $1000 cash, fame and for some reason- a punch bowl.
With his renewed street cred, Henry Ford founded the Henry Ford Company, with big investors
backing him up.
The investors wanted Henry to design a lightweight passenger car they could sell for cheap.
But Henry had caught the speed bug and got to work on a four cylinder race car to break
his old record.
The investors were like "no, that won't make us any money you weirdo," so Henry
Ford left the Henry Ford Company in 1902.
With Henry gone, the investors restructured and renamed the company to honor the founder
of Detroit: Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.
Cadillac.
So by 1903, Ford starts another company.
Despite the fact that he builds great race cars, nobody wants to give him any money,
because they think he might just blow it on race cars again.
He's going around town, looking for cash, but Detroit back then was a small place…
people talked, and the word was that if you invest in Henry Ford, you're going to lose
money.
But there were two young rich guys who didn't care what people said… and those guys were
the Dodge brothers.
They've got that Oldsmobile money burning a hole in their pocket and they want to expand...
The Dodge boys knew that Ford had his back against the wall- he was in debt, he lost
all his money leaving what was now called Cadillac, and couldn't get anybody else
to give him money for his new car company.
So the Dodge Brothers worked out a deal to give Ford $10,000 worth of cash and materials
for his new Ford Motor Company.
And in return, the Dodge brothers demanded a ten percent share of the company, AND the
rights to all of Ford's assets in case of another bankruptcy.
Effectively, the Dodge Brothers owned Ford, both the company and the man.
Work began on Henry's new cars.
Dodge supplied the chassis complete with engine and transmission, and the rest of the car
would be finished at Ford's plant.
As the Ford Motor Company grew, Henry slowly became increasingly more eccentric.
He began to think of his own body as an automobile.
He Reasoned that if his cars were designed to run off the best fuel, the same should
true for himself.
He adopted a nearly vegetarian diet, eating veggies from his garden and "roadside greens"-
roadside greens are weeds.
People thought this was kind of weird, I mean can you imagine, seeing your boss pull weeds
out from behind your building, and throw them into his salad?
I've seen Pumphrey do some weird stuff but nothing like that.
In fact…
I've never seen pumphrey eat ANY vegetable.
Except pickles of course, but are pickles vegetables?
Anyway, the Dodge brothers didn't seem to mind Ford's weird eating habits because
he was making them buttloads of money.
Plus, they were too focused on climbing Detroit's exclusive social ladder to care.
But polite detroit society didn't want them.
John and Horace were known for hanging out with their employees after hours, hitting
the bars and getting crunk next to the same people who built their engines.
This made them unsuitable for Detroit high society.
"Oh those Dodge brothers, do display most contemptible of behavior."
"Oh I agree, I agree wholeheartedly.Shall we hit the brothel down the street then?"
"Absolutely."
"Splendid."
So what do you do if you want to be high society, but they won't even let you go to the symphony?
You buy the symphony.
John and Horace Dodge assumed the financial liability of the Detroit symphony, effectively
buying their way into the Detroit elite.
Oh, you won't let us into your club?
How 'bout we just buy your club?
How you like them apples?
How 'bout you lick my apples dude!
America!
That's how we do it.
Capitalism.
Both Ford and the Dodge brothers were aspiring industrial titans, with their own strange
eccentricities: Ford with his dandelion eating ways, and the Dodge's chips on their shoulders.
Naturally, a partnership between the two would not last.
For years, the Dodge brothers had been giving Ford suggestions on how to improve the Model
T; but Henry's pride and stubborn nature got in the way of listening.
He just thought they were trying to screw him for more money.
It started to become clear that Ford was a little paranoid.
They also soon realized that Ford was prejudiced… against redheads.
Yeah… the Ginger-haired Dodge Brothers were 10% partners with a man who thought they were
evil because of their hair color.
Tired of being ignored by Henry, Dodge completed construction on a massive new facility in
1910.
Their plant featured a floor to floor assembly line, medical wing, and a machine shop called
"the Playpen" for workers to invent stuff in their spare time.
The Dodge Brothers even served beer on the assembly floor when it was hot.
Honestly, doesn't sound like a bad place to work.
By contrast, Ford had a "Sociology Department" within his company that was almost like a
secret police.
They'd show up to your house to make sure it was clean, they'd ask you about your
marriage, and made sure you weren't drinking.
Safe to say there wasn't any beer being served at the Ford Motor Company.
Ford was suspicious.
Why were those Dodge brothers building a factory to rival his own?
"Henry they're not even Irish they just have red hair."
"I don't care, I could smell them for miles."
Initially, the plant was cranking out Model T components, as the Dodge Brothers had been
doing all along.
But Henry suspected the Dodge Bros were planning to do something against him, so he preempted
their preemptive strike with a new factory for himself.
The River Rouge plant allowed Ford to rely solely on his own employees, and would be
cheaper than outsourcing his work to Dodge.
Ford might have been a weirdo, but his suspicions were correct.
The Dodge Brothers were finished with being ignored and decided they were gonna make their
own damn automobile.
In 1913 John Dodge resigned from his position of Vice President at Ford, and announced the
Dodge Brothers would stop building cars and parts for the Ford Motor Company so they could
make their own.
The Dodge Model 30 made more power than the Model T, it had an electric starter, and a
steel body.
By almost every measure it was a better car than the Model T, but about twice as expensive.
True to form, when asked about the price difference, John Dodge proclaimed, "Just think of all
those Ford owners who will someday want an automobile".
That's talking shit, 1900s style
But remember, the Dodge brothers still owned 10% of the Ford Motor Company… while they're
building, and making money selling Dodges.
They were using the dividends from Ford to run Dodge.
Henry Ford was directly paying for the operations of a competing company.
And he really hated that.
What's a Ford to do?
He just stopped paying them, even though the Dodge bros were rightfully entitled to their
dividends.
Ford was like, "I don't care.
I'm not Paying."
So John and Horace sued for their missing money, and Ford lost.
He ended up paying them 19 million in back dividends, AND had to resume paying them quarterly.
"Well that sucks."
Ford needed the Dodge Brothers to disappear… from his company.
To coax them into selling their stake in Ford, Henry leaked a story to the Los Angeles Examiner
that he was going to leave Ford and start a new company, that would sell an even cheaper
car.
If this was true, Ford undercutting himself would tank the Ford Motor Company value.
But nobody believed it, because it was stupid, so the company DIDN'T lose value.
THEN the Dodge brothers got a mysterious phone call from an anonymous party, offering to
take the stock off their hands for a good price.
"Hey I don't know you, but I'd be willing to take that stock off your hands for a nice
price because I know, and you know, that it's going down.
It's going way down.
That's what the newspapers say.
Uh my name?
It's uhh, Fenry..uh Kenry Dord uh Henry gah"
Again, they still didn't believe it, and weren't going to sell for anything less
than what they thought their 10% stake was worth.
It wasn't long however, before the Dodge boys got tired of getting weird phone calls
late at night from "Schmenry Schmord," or Fenry Hord, so they just auctioned off
the stock themselves for what it was worth, making 25 million dollars in the process.
And Ford was finally free from Dodge.
The Dodge Brothers had turned an initial investment worth about 250 thousand dollars today, into
the equivalent of 760 million dollars.
Not bad for a couple of boys from Niles.
If you're from Niles, that's cool.
Without the Dodge Brothers, Henry Ford might never have built the Model T. But without
the Model T, the Dodge brothers might not have built the first Dodge.
And the craziest part of all is that the rivalry that started between Ford- a conservative
teetotaller and Dodge- the Maverick outsiders is still raging over a century later.
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Are you a Dodge guy, are you a Mopar or No Car kind of person?
Or are you a Ford guy, are you a sensitive boy, do you drive a Mustang?
Let me know in the comments.
Yo are you watching Formula One?
Check out this episode of WheelHouse it's all about Fernando Alonso and why he's the
best driver on the grid.
Check out this episode of Up to Speed on the Mitsubishi Eclipse, because I told you to.
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