9N Sheetmetal Designer Dead at 94

My hat is off to Mr.Gregorie! Not many men can boast of the accomplishments that men like he have done.

Zane

This could be heresy, but here goes!!!

Hank was a tinkerer in the greatest American sense. A farm boy playing with steam engines in his back yard.

But this tractor venture was the result of Henry's financial success, which needed a few pesky patent and legal obstacles cleared first. The Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers sued Ford to keep him out of the business and to maintain their "monopoly" over gas driven cars based on their 1895 patent.

Without winning that case, there would be no mass produced Model T. And without that success, Ford wouldn't have had the cash to go to better, if not bigger things.

And then there's the Dodge Brothers stockholders lawsuit after that which prompted Henry to buy out all those dang pesky shareholders. If it hadn't been for the buyback, Henry might've lost complete control of the company to people without vision. And they wouldn't have let him innovate the 9N tractor.

And we know about the 8N licensing "kitchen table" deal with Ferguson that fell apart after his death.

What strikes me about Ford is not his ability to surround himself with sheetmetal and hydraulic whizzes, but his luck in getting down and dirty with the lawyers and retaining control of his company's direction. There were a bunch of people with bright engineering designs and concepts, but Gregorie's fenders would be nowhere without the lawyers Hank used to defend his long term goals for his corporation.

The problem today is not the lack of good ideas from smart guys, or even too many lawyers and lawsuits. The problem, as in Hank's day, is not enough private capital pursuing private ambition.

/begin flaming now/

One great read is the book "Henry's Lieutenants" by Ford R. Bryan, it is a "Great lakes publication". Or the book "The Last Billionare" Both are packed with facts about Henry. The fact is if it had not been for men like C. Harold Wills, P.E.Martin,the Dodges and many others old Henry would have failed the last time also. Many think Sorenson was the great production man and he was one of the best but it was Bill Knudsen who was the production man for Ford. When Ford let him go to Chevrolet, that was Fords loss to them in the automotive business.

You could make a point that "Big Business" is now so big that it completely dominates any attempts that a smaller company might make to bring out a competing product. New ideas are bought out and become the property of the original corperation they might have competed against. If Henry's family were to start a new company called "Ford", using their own legal name, they would be shut down fast by the original company that Henry started. He had to call his first tractor "Fordson", just because someone else beat him to the use of his own name for a tractor product.

Nothing against lawyers, but like everything else, they can be used in the wrong way. Really liked your comments Jeff!