LINCOLN and CONTINENTAL
CLASSIC MOTORCARS
The Early Years
By
Marvin Arnold
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Marvin Arnold and Samco Publishing 1989
All rights reserved
First Edition Taylor Publishing Company
Automobile - United States - History
This book is not dedicated to my children or your children, although I hope that they might read and enjoy it for years to come. This one is for my generation and the generation past, those who will fill in the blanks as they visit here.
FORWORD BY WILLIAM CLAY FORD
I have had a keen interest in the Lincoln and Lincoln-Continental all my life and I must confess that the rich detail in Marvin Arnold's book includes many interesting facts that I did not know. This is a valuable reference work for the serious student of these cars.
Beyond that, this book contains a wealth of information about the beginnings of automotive design as a formalized discipline.
My father, Edsel Ford, was a leader in this movement and surrounded himself with many of the most gifted industrial designers in the nation during the years between the wars. Mr. Arnold caught the spirit of the enormously creative team my father assembled and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it.
BOOK OUTLINE
CHAPTER ONE - THOSE EARLY YEARS
The Cadillac was a Ford reviews the establishment of automobile making in America and the early manufacturing endeavors of Henry Ford and H.M. Leland.
CHAPTER TWO - THE LELAND LINCOLNS
Where in the “L” do we go from here explains how the first Lincoln motorcars came into existence and Henry Leland
CHAPTER THREE - LINCOLN SURVIVES
A chrome greyhound leads the way is devoted to the Model L Lincolns of the 1920s and a time of opulence.
CHAPTER FOUR - THE LINCOLN COACHBUILDERS
An American carrossiers who's who discusses the golden era of coachbuilding as it related to the Lincoln and the early Automobile Salons.
CHAPTER FIVE - THE CLASSIC SERIES
“K” is for king of the road follows the development and production of the Model K Lincolns during the changing times of the 1930s.
CHAPTER SIX - ENTER THE ZEPHYR
Ride like the wind begins the development of a completely new Lincoln, the Zephyr. a design influenced by the age of Art Deco, streamlined passenger trains and colossal World's Fairs.
Chapter Seven - THE ORIGINAL CONTINENTAL
A Ford that was an Edsel relates what is believed to be the most nearly correct story of the original Lincoln Continental. Much research went into the separation of myth and legend from fact in this chapter. Included is an interview with designer Bob Gregorie.
Chapter Eight - THE LINCOLN LIBERATORS
Into the breach with Henry II covers the World War II years at Ford and Lincoln, the changing of the guard and the beginnings of a new Ford Motor Company.
Chapter Nine - THOSE COSMOPOLITAN TIMES
Of bulbous beauties concludes the early years at Lincoln. It is devoted to that rare and often forgotten era of bulbous Lincolns. They were not the old Lincolns, but they were not yet the modern Lincolns.
Years, models and production numbers. Glossary of automotive terms and about the original classic publication.
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR
In 1986, the year in which I sat down to write this book, the Lincoln motorcar had been around for sixty-six. The automobile industry celebrated its hundredth anniversary and I was half its age. I grew up in Oklahoma, along U.S. Highway 66, or as the song says, “Got my kicks on Route 66.” Route 66 was the twentieth century's answer to the Santa Fe Trail. It carried many a Midwesterner to the golden shores of California and points in between. I remember “The War” (WWII). Although I was only a youngster at the time, I can still remember synthetic rubber, Plexiglas and gasoline “A” ration windshield stickers,
My first encounter with a Lincoln was in 1946, a Lincoln Continental coupe with push-button doors. It belonged to an Air Force captain, a neighbor whom I befriended the year my little brother was born. On reflection, I believe that the young officer or his wife must have been from a wealthy family in order to afford such a car on a captain's pay, or for that matter, get delivery on any new automobile in 1946.
The Ford industry was to play a major role in my informal education. Like many kids, I learned to drive on my grandfather's Fordson (Ford and Son) tractor. My cousins and I would argue over whose turn it was to drive. Being the smallest, I was usually last. One summer in the early fifties my family took a vacation to Sandusky, Ohio. I had always been fascinated by airplanes and my first ride aloft was out over Lake Erie in a Ford Tri-Motor. It was on that same visit, I got to drive a Model T Ford, which belonged to my friend's grandfather. For the first time, I began to understand how much the automobile industry had progressed in just a few short decades.
My first Lincoln was a 1939 Zephyr three-window coupe. It was black with a dark maroon dash and gray velour interior. I always called it mohair or maybe it’s the other way round. For winter it had a Southwind gasoline heater and a pair of large driving lamps mounted on the front bumper brackets. It had some minor damage to the left running board cover, which I never could afford to have repaired. I purchased the Zephyr in 1953. That summer, I accidentally rolled my father's brand new Ford Fordor. It was not a 1953 Cosmo and I was not Chuck Stevenson, as I quickly discovered.
After school and on Saturdays, I worked at Jaffe's Auto Supply to support the Zephyr, a 1940 Ford Tudor, a 1937 Ford Club Coupe and a 1939 Packard sedan. None of which I had paid over $125 for, except the Zephyr for which I paid a whopping $200. Like most mid-America suburban kids of the fifties, my life centered around the car culture.
Why I bought the Zephyr, I don't exactly know. I remember thinking that it was about the neatest car I had ever seen. I particularly liked the smooth center-console gearshift lever control and the Columbia two-speed vacuum shift rear axle that was controlled by a push-pull knob. You could drive along beside someone at 50 MPH in high-second, then amaze them by shifting again to low-third and then to high-third.
I installed hinges at the top of the small auxiliary rear seat's back that allowed at least three friends to crawl into the long, wood-decked trunk. It was a great way to sneak into the drive-in theater. Sam, a mechanic on the night shift at Delco Products, helped me grind the valves on that old flathead V-12. I experimented with a single-throat Studebaker carburetor to improve the V-12s fuel economy, but the engine lost too much acceleration power.
The motor mounts for a V-8 power plant had been welded in place a few inches rearward of the HV-12 mounts by the previous owner, who had an eight in it prior to reinstalling the twelve. A friend gave us a 5-9AB Mercury block engine, but my Dad and I never got around to installing it. The old Zephyr V-12 engine ran fine at a constant 12 miles to the gallon, so long as you did not operate the gasoline heater.
My folks owned a large turn-of-the-century house with a three-car garage, which had been converted from a stable. At times, my dad complained about not being able to find a parking place in the driveway. He had taught me mechanics, beginning with a Wizzer motorbike kit that we assembled when I was in my early teens.
My mother was always fond of telling this story about me, “He always looked like a grease monkey until a young girl in tight shorts walked past one day as he peered out from under one of his old cars. You know, he came in the house, cleaned up and I don't think I ever saw him under one of those machines again.” My dad came home one day and announced that since he could still no longer get into his own garage, some of the cars had to go.
The Zephyr remained until we moved back to Oklahoma in 1955, when it was sold for about what I had paid for it. The last Ford product I owned before going off to college was a 1929 Model A coupe, which I drove every day of my senior year.
While in the Navy, I owned a not-so-new, flamingo-pink, 1956 Lincoln Premier. One of those cars you didn't park, you docked. In the mid-sixties, after my wife and I made some money on a real estate transaction, we purchased a one-year-old Lincoln sedan. That Thanksgiving we drove it from Texas, where we now live, to Florida on vacation. That did it. Once again I was hooked on Lincolns, now called Continentals.
I will never again feel so affluent as I felt cruising down the Sunshine Parkway with the power seat rocked back, puffing on a good twenty-cent cigar. Thus began my affair with Lincolns and Continentals. I quit smoking years ago, but never lost my appreciation for the Lincoln.
Since my first ride in that Ford Tri-Motor, I have logged over 6,000 hours as pilot-in-command of a hundred different aircraft and work now as a design engineer. We have owned a succession of Lincolns, Marks and Continentals, including several presently. My wife has accused me of going out for a haircut and coming home with a different old car.
Once I picked up a friend from back East at the airport in our, then new, 1967 white Continental Coupe with brown leather seats. He said something that has always stayed with me, “This (the Lincoln) is what I call an automobile. The rest are just cars.”
As a young man, Lincolns were engineering and design marvels to be disassembled, studied and reassembled. In later years, they were fine machines to be driven and enjoyed. Now my Lincolns are time machines that allow me to travel back, not only to my youth, but into the lives and pasts of millions of Americans. I have a hobby, an avocation called Lincoln motorcars and I would like to tell you about them.
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK
The year 1986, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the internal-combustion engine automobile. This centennial was based on the 1886 European patents of Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. There were, however, many significant automotive contributions both before and after this date. The original Lincoln motorcar, designed in 1919, was one product of these evolutionary developments. Thus our book on Lincolns begins in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The appropriate format for a marque automobile book is difficult to determine. Should it trace the people and the company or be a chronology of the car itself? Should it be a narrative or a string of technical information? Complicating a by-the-model-year approach is the fact that designs sometimes overlap time periods. For example, Model K Lincolns were still being produced near the end of the 1930s while the Model H Zephyr Lincolns were introduced in late 1935.
The book has, therefore, been divided into nine chapters based on significant model periods or eras. The stories, anecdotes and technical aspects are related chronologically within those eras. Ten Appendices and a Glossary have been included to help the reader understand the specifications and terms applicable to this particular segment of the automotive industry.
Hundreds of books and periodicals were researched in order to supplement the author's experience with the various Lincoln models. This book is richly illustrated with advertising art from the respective periods. In addition to being beautiful art work, these graphics should help the reader have a feeling for the motif of the era being discussed.
Only a few comprehensive books have been published on the Lincoln motorcar. Fifty Years of Lincoln Mercury by G.H. Dammann was a pictorial history. It was assembled years ago when photos from the Henry Ford Museum photo archives were readily available for publication, but are now no longer accessible to the public except via royalty payments.
The author would like to thank the following people: Suzie Arnold for many hours of typing, proofing and letting the author win a few of the arguments; Dr. June Welch, Professor of history University of Dallas and author, for his encouragement; Dave Cole, author and early Continental expert, for his advice; Bob Gregorie, designer and Bob Thomas, designer and author, for their interviews; David Freeman, Lincoln history buff, for his input; Sarabeth Allen and Jewel Parr, librarians; and for believing in the book and the author, Neal Kimmel and George Southern of Taylor Publishing Company's Fine Books Division.
Also Professor David Lewis, Ford historian and author; David Crippen of the Henry Ford Museum archives; Howard Pickard, retired Eagle L-M and quintessential Lincoln salesman; George Blesse, antique car dealer and auctioneer; the many Lincoln, Continental and Zephyr hobbyists who have graciously shared their wealth of knowledge; and a special thanks to William Clay Ford, Vice-Chairman of the Ford Motor Company, for his written remarks in the Forward to this book.
Charles Rolls, the business partner of Henry Royce, believed that motorcars were for aristocrats alone. Henry Rolls was killed in a flying accident in 1910 so he never knew how badly Henry Ford trod upon this idea. Many view automotive history as merely a specialized branch of industrial history, but to the automobile buff it is much more. The Lincoln motorcar, by virtue of its limited production lacks the popularity of e marques, but Lincoln is exemplary as an American marque. Lincoln's history closely parallels that of the American automotive industry and the nation itself.
The stories in this book tell the tale of why a Cadillac was really a Ford and the Lincoln a Cadillac; of a 1934 Lincoln that looked like a Volkswagen Beetle and was named for a General Motors passenger train. It is about a lead-filled, custom-bodied cabriolet, which is the only recognized modern classic automobile. It is about an aluminum bodied V-12 engines and the iron-willed men who created them.
The rich and colorful history of the Lincoln motorcar is the story of one of the finest series of automobiles ever conceived and produced. These automobiles were sport and luxury, Roadster and Town Sedan, Zephyr and Continental; they were the Lincoln motorcars.
CHAPTER ONE
THOSE EARLY YEARS
The Cadillac Was A Ford
In 1886, the first patent was issued for a working internal-combustion engine automobile and children yet unborn were destined to shape the future of the motorcars, which became known as the Lincoln and the Lincoln Continental.
The automobile itself was not really an invention, but was the application of various engine designs to a land transport vehicle. The internal-combustion engine was an evolutionary result of the cylinder pump, the atomizer and Volta's spark pistol. As early as Leonardo da Vinci and even before his time the concept of a self-powered vehicle had been proposed.
The French word Automobile had not yet come to America when the news from Germany of Karl Benz' and Gottlieb Daimler's gasoline-powered carriages arrived. Benz was assisted by Emile Levassor and the third vehicle they built was exhibited at the 1887 Paris Exposition. A Belgian, J. Etienne Lenoir, had constructed a lamp gas-powered carriage in the late 1850s and reportedly sold it to the Czar of Russia in 1862.
In lawsuits that arose many years later, his design was singled out as the first example of a vehicle to be successfully powered by an internal-combustion engine.
John Lambert of Ohio City, Indiana, with his three-wheeler, may have been the first American to build a gasoline-powered automobile. He had used stationary engines extensively prior to experimenting with a powered vehicle.
Elwood Haynes of Kokomo, however, claimed to have been first. Haynes, with the assistance of the Apperson Brothers, used a Sintz boat engine to power a four-wheeled buggy. Charles and Frank Duryea of Springfield, Massachusetts, had been working on various designs and may have actually beaten Haynes by as much as a year. They were both bicycle mechanics like the Wright Brothers of powered flight fame.
Hiram Percy Maxim, a practicing projectile engineer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, lived in Lynn, Massachusetts. He had observed Nicolas Otto's lamp oil engine at work in the farm fields nearby. Maxim experimented with gasoline to power the three-cylinder, four-cycle engine for a tricycle, which he began constructing in early 1894. He was told at the local hardware store to leave gasoline alone because, “most of them who fooled with it blew 'em self up.”
Then there was George Baldwin Selden of Rochester, New York, the inventor of Neophyte had also seen Otto's engine. Selden was granted U.S. patent number 549,160 on November 5, 1895, for an improved compression type road engine powered by liquid hydrocarbon. Using the guise of periodically revising his applications, Selden had been able to extend the effective life of his patent.
In the 1890s, Colonel Albert Pope was building electric motor carriages, which were more commonly called horseless carriages. Pope purchased an interest in the Selden patent and, with his associates, eventually tried to enforce this patent against all American auto manufacturers. However, in the second decade of the twentieth century, the court ruled that Selden's concept applied only to the two-cycle engine.
Charles Duryea in 1893, Haynes-Apperson in 1894 and Henry Ford and Charles King in 1896 had all constructed successful gasoline powered carriages. Charles King was what we might consider today a sports car enthusiast. In addition to being an early auto designer, he actually drove the Benz that finished second to Duryea in the Chicago Times Herald road race of November, 1895.
At the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, Ransom Olds displayed his steam-powered car. The word Car denotes a kinship to the railroad rolling stock and is slang or an abbreviated form of car'riage.
George Whitney, who inspired Francis E. and Freelan O. Stanley, had built a successful steamer in Boston prior to 1896. The Whites and Stanleys built reliable steam cars through the early twentieth century. Vehicles powered by gasoline engines, however, proved easier to start and to operate.
As for the Electrics, in 1899 Thomas A. Edison summed it up best when he said, “The need for constantly renewing is too great a handicap to overcome.”
Olds soon abandoned steam power for gasoline engines. The buggy with its front floorboard curved up like a bobsled was called the Curved Dash Oldsmobile and was immortalized by the song “In My Merry Oldsmobile.” So grand was the reputation of the Oldsmobile that the Reo Truck honored Ransom Eli Olds by using his initials. Alexander Winton, a bicycle builder, founded the Winton Motor Carriage Company of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1897.
The Winton became a major competitor of the Oldsmobile. Automobile manufacturing in the old days was a classic example of free enterprise and no-holds-barred competition. Alex Winton, it is said, even helped James Packard get started in the business. James Packard purchased Winton Number 12, but complained about it. He was told to go build a better one himself, if he could.
Packard did just that and continued building premier motorcars for years to come. Ol' Jim was working under a car one day when a prospective buyer inquired about its quality. Packard is said to have replied, “Ask a man who owns one.” This became the Packard Company’s motto.
Cars were not built to a standard configuration in those days. The average motorist of today would find it difficult to start and drive many of these older cars. By 1910 this began to change and today's drivers would feel quite at home behind the wheel of a 1920s car. One of the standardization adapted was Packard’s H-pattern gearshift. Even Ford changed to this gear pattern at the end of the Model T series.
The first president of the United States to ride in an automobile was William McKinley. On November 22, 1899, Horse Age magazine of New York reported that earlier in the week President McKinley had ridden in F.O. Stanley's Locomobile.
Theodore Roosevelt rode in many different makes of automobiles. One such occasion was in promoting A.P. Warner's new invention, the speedometer. Teddy's love for horses probably prevented him from considering the transition to the motorcar completely.
William Howard Taft's administration was the first to purchase and use automobiles. Taft had toured in a White Steamer during his campaign for office and after he became President, the executive branch purchased a Baker Electric, a White Steamer, two Pierce-Arrows and two motorcycles. Although Taft was issued Connecticut driver's license number 17,474, he was generally chauffeured by Quartermaster Corpsman George H. Robinson.
At the New York Automobile Show of 1900, some forty automakers displayed over three hundred models ranging in price from $280 to $4,000. By 1910, there were 458,500 motor vehicles registered in the United States. Automobile manufacturing was largely centered in New England and in the northeastern Midwest. They were referred to as the Eastern and Western companies. The Eastern companies adapted to the Vanderbilt, Astor and Winthrop type of clientele, making higher priced cars for upper class buyers. The Western companies produced lower priced cars at higher production rates and catered to farmers and industrial workers.
After the turn of the century automobile companies sprang up all over and promoters sold motorcar company stocks as get-rich-quick schemes. Studebaker had been in the wagon and carriage building business for many years when the motorcar revolution exploded. Pierce-Arrow, a wire manufacturer building bird cages, entered the auto parts business by making spoke wheels.
White was a sewing machine company. In San Antonio, Texas, Sam Pandolfo manufactured about seven hundred automobiles before going to jail for pocketing too much of the stock revenue. The automobile spawned hundreds of other successful industries, two of which being the gasoline stations and tire companies.
Roads were poor prior to the First World War, especially in the West and South and automobile travel required the same planning as going on a safari. The Lincoln Highway Association was founded in 1913 to promote quality roads across the United States. There is no connection between the Lincoln Highway and the Lincoln Motor Company. Carl Graham Fisher of Indianapolis helped to raise four million dollars for construction of a public highway between Jersey City on the East Coast and San Francisco on the West Coast.
Named the Lincoln Memorial Highway by Fisher, it was not completed until the 1920s when it was designated as U.S. Route 30. In 1916, Congress passed the Federal Road Act based on powers granted for postal access roads, providing federal aid for state construction of highways. The Defense Highway Act of 1944 eventually gave this nation its superhighway system.
In 1933, a presidential commission concluded that no other invention so quickly influenced the national culture, transforming habits, thoughts and language as did the automobile. At a 1971 meeting in New York City, the American Historical Association formally recognized the growing interest in automotive history and the impact of the automobile on our society.
Many of us who enjoy automobilia look upon it as a form of modern art. The sculpturing of steel, wood and synthetics into the automobile is as much an art form as stone carving and pottery-making was to the ancients.
Thus, the stage was set for our story. America by the late 1900s was on a collision course for a love affair with the automobile. This story is about one such automobile called a Lincoln. In the second year of the twentieth century, two automobile geniuses met and set in motion one of the most interesting series of events in American motorcar history.
A TALE OF TWO HENRYS - Henry Ford was the eldest child of a rather humble Michigan farm family. He moved to Detroit in about 1885 and took a job as an electrician for the Edison Company. As early as 1889, he became interested in the internal-combustion engine. He had his own idea for a lightweight, self-propelled vehicle. Ford began work on his Quadricycle on New Year's Day, 1894 and test-drove it two years later on Bagley Avenue in Detroit.
Charles Brady King, also of Detroit, beat Henry by a couple of months. King and Ford were acquainted and both had read an article in the American Machinist on how to construct a simple gasoline engine. Oliver Barthel, George Gato, James W. Bishop and Edward S. “Spider” Huff all helped or worked on the first Ford automobile. The Quadricycle was sold to Charles Ashley of Detroit because Ford was dissatisfied with its lack of a reverse gear and other shortcomings.
Even if Henry Ford was not the inventor of the first automobile, he may have been the first used car dealer. The car Henry originally sold for $200 was later repurchased and now resides in a place of honor at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Henry built his second car in 1897, but always claimed to have built an automobile prior to 1892. It was, however, a rather unsuccessful steam tractor. His experience with this vehicle probably motivated him to begin experiments with gasoline engines. It is interesting to note that early Ford company brochures mistakenly used the 1892 date for the Quadricycle.
Henry Martyn Leland was the son of a Vermont teamster. He was raised in a devoutly Christian home and named for a famous British missionary. At age seventeen, he went to work for a tool company that supplied machined parts to the Springfield Armory. It was here and later at Colt Arms, that young Henry Leland became a master machinist. He was strongly patriotic, a Unionist in political philosophy. It was during these early years that Leland adopted Abe Lincoln as his personal hero. He would later name his automobile company for the sixteenth President of the United States.
Leland worked for Brown & Sharpe as a precision tool representative and developed manufacturing techniques for Westinghouse. A little known fact about Henry Leland is that he invented mechanical barber clippers. Henry and Wilford Leland, Robert C. Faulconer and Charles H. Norton started a milling and casting business in Detroit. By 1899, it became a major parts producer for Olds Motor Works. Alfred Sloan of Hyatt Roller Bearing Company finally convinced Leland to use roller bearings in his engines and transmissions, but only after the Hyatt company met Leland's accuracy standards. Sloan later became president of General Motors.
Leland's continued insistence on precision and accuracy made Leland-Built an industry byword for quality. The Leland & Faulconer Mfg. Co. had originally intended to build boat engines, but quickly became competitors with the Dodge Brothers and other contract automotive parts suppliers.
Both Henrys had sons. Leland's son, Wilford Chester, was born in 1869. Ford's son, Edsel Bryant, was born in 1893. Bryant was Mrs. Clara Ford's family name. Less flamboyant and less famous than their fathers, both sons nevertheless left their individual marks on the annals of automotive history.
Henry Ford is generally credited with having failed in three or four car companies. However, if you do not count experimental car companies, race car ventures and corporate reorganizations, there was really only the first failure. His second of two ventures in association with William H. Murphy later became part of General Motors. Henry Ford's auto firm, in association with Alex Y. Malcomson, evolved into the Ford Motor Company.
In 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was organized. The incorporators were Frank Hacke, Pat Ducy, Wil Maybury, Saf Delano, Frank Eddy, Bill Murphy, W.C. McMillian, Frank Alderman, Fred Osborn, Clarence Band and Henry Ford who was also chief engineer. Only about ten or twelve cars were ever produced by this company. Henry Ford was less than thrilled with his small interest in the company's profits. He was more interested in developing a new type of car than in producing substandard machines. The design he had in mind would eventually become the 1903 Ford Model A.
Frank Alderman had been promoting sales of a new model Detroit automobile. In November 1901, he persuaded Murphy to endorse renaming and reorganizing the Detroit Automobile Company into the Henry Ford Company. Ford was given one-sixth interest and a cash advance to develop his new prototype. For the next eight months Henry fiddled while Murphy and the rest of the stockholders burned. Bill Murphy and Henry Leland attended the same local Presbyterian Church. One Sunday in the spring of 1902, the two were discussing production problems at the Henry Ford Company. At the request of Murphy, Leland agreed to have a look and make some suggestions. He did and Ford departed. This seemingly insignificant incident touched off a chain of events that affects the automobile industry to this day.
Henry M. Leland was a tall elderly, white-whiskered gentleman with a reputation for mechanical perfection. His analytical reasoning and quest for precision made Leland a role model for the modern automotive engineer. Henry Ford, on the other hand, was a wiry, shoot-from-the-hip, experimentation inventor. The two originally met at the Detroit Auto Show in 1901. It was not said that the two Henrys disliked one another. In fact, they seemed to have the highest regard for each other’s professional achievements.
Leland just could not abide non-precision workmanship and thus was overly critical of Ford's designs. Leland knew that the Oldsmobile engine his company was currently building, was already superior to Ford's engine. Ford probably did not give a damn. What he really wanted to do was build a race car that could challenge the Winton Bullet. To say that Ford and Leland locked automobile horns is a pun one can hardly pass up, but it was probably just time for a change of drivers.
Leland formally took over management of the Henry Ford Company at the shareholders' behest. In August, 1902, the corporation's name was changed to Cadillac Automobile Company. Thus the first Cadillac was really a Ford. The Faulconer & Leland shop provided the engines for the new Ford/Cadillac; it was good business for both companies. Other parts were obtained from contract vendors like the Dodge Brothers. The Dodge's machine shop had built transmissions and parts for the Oldsmobile. The Dodges later became major suppliers to the Ford Motor Company and for a short time were stockholders. Ultimately, the Dodge Brothers would build their own automobiles.
Some General Motors historians try to overlook the Ford/Cadillac lineage. To disprove the similarity between the automobiles, they point to the improvements Leland made in the Ford design, most notably the two-cylinder versus the original one-cylinder engine. Ford had told the Detroit auto people that he himself thought it was an inferior product and needed more development. Murphy, however, continued to push for production. The L-section frame versus the original channel-type frame was another improvement implemented during early Cadillac production models.
The Leland spring design was semi-elliptical and attached with gooseneck hangers that resulted in a very smooth ride, but these too were modified and although minor, were some of the changes made to the early production Model A Cadillac. Ford Motor Company went to some length to avoid mentioning Leland's role in the origination of the Lincoln design.
The ridiculous enters when one argues that the Model A Cadillac came out before the Model A Ford. Of course it did. Henry Ford had started the Detroit (Ford/Cadillac) automobile two years earlier. The absurd comes in when one argues that the Cadillac was left-hand steering and the Ford was European right-hand. A photo entitled, “First Cadillac” and dated 1902, shows Wilford Leland in the left seat with Alanson Bush behind the wheel on the right side.
Ford and Cadillac both went to left-hand steering shortly thereafter. In horse-drawn carriages, the driver often sat on the right to allow free use of a whip in the right hand. Automobiles switched the driver to the left side to allow passengers, often ladies, to exit to the generally less-muddy curb side. Note that the Ford Model A, mentioned before, should not be confused with the famous Model A built by Ford between 1929 and 1931. The original Model A was the predecessor of the Ford Model N and Model T.
In 1905, Leland & Faulconer merged with the Cadillac Automotive Company and the new Cadillac motorcar became the industry standard. Henry and Wilford Leland retained about 19 percent ownership in Cadillac. The Cadillac won engineering awards like the Dewar Trophy from Great Britain for the precision manufacturing of standardized parts in 1908 and for its electrical system in 1912. Henry M. Leland was president of the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) for several terms. The title, “Master of Precision,” given him by the British, became a synonym for Leland and will remain his personal badge of courage throughout automotive history.
A friend of Henry Leland, Byron Carter, once stopped to assist a lady driver crank start her automobile. The engine backfired and Carter was struck by the handle. He later died of the injury. This incident moved Leland to work closely with Charles Kettering of Dayton, Ohio to develop a self-starter. Kettering was a noted inventor and founder of the Dayton Electric Company. He adapted a high torque electric motor to the mechanical task of cranking the engine. His company, Delco, later became part of General Motors and Charles Kettering was influential in GM management for many years. Another starter, the Rushmore, was developed in 1911.
It was available on the Simplex and other automobiles at extra cost. The Rushmore design became known as the Bendix drive and its design was closer to starters today than was Kettering’s design.
David Dunbar Buick had made considerable money by inventing a process for enameling bathroom fixtures. He turned his profits and efforts towards the development of an overhead valve engine in 1903. The Buick Motor Company, a partnership with David Buick and the Briscoe brothers, was sold to Billy Durant in 1904. And Benjamin Briscoe and Jonathan Maxwell founded the United States Motor Company, a consortium of 130 firms; all of which folded in 1912.
William Carpo Durant borrowed from Wall Street's J.P. Morgan to form International Motors Company. After a split with Morgan, Durant scratched out the word International on the company stationery and wrote General above it. Leland and Murphy sold Cadillac to Durant in July of 1909 and became General Motors stockholders. Wilford C. Leland was instrumental in saving the entire General Motors conglomerate from bankruptcy in 1910 through tactful negotiations with GM's New York bankers. The elder Leland was in Europe at the time, Wilford succeeded where Durant had failed.
Henry Ford had left the old Detroit Automobile Company in March of 1902 with the designs for his race car, a few hundred dollars in cash and the company's name, which was his birthright anyway. Ford took up racing with a passion. Automobile racing had come of age with the turn of the century. Most early races came down to who could finish at all, let alone who could finish first.
The first reported race in America was won by J. Frank Duryea in 1895. Only the Duryea and the Benz automobiles completed the race. The fifty mile run between Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, took nine hours. In 1901, the Cleveland built Winton came to Detroit to race. The hometown entry was Henry Ford's two-cylinder, seat-over engine racer. The Winton took the first turn in a cloud of dust, but developed engine problems. Ford won the race with an average speed of 44.8 miles per hour. Henry was overheard saying, “I'll never do that again. I was scared to death.”
Tom Cooper and Henry Ford built a new racer, naming it the ol’ 999 for a famous locomotive of the era. It was a four-cylinder, seven-square engine that developed approximately eighty horsepower, so large that the driver was now placed behind the engine. This also resulted in a lower and improved center of gravity. This car was used by Barney Oldfield to set the first mile-a-minute record for an oval track. A bicycle racer, Berna Eli Oldfield had been hired as the Ford competition race driver.