The Ford Motor Company

8 Pages 1996 Words

ful organization to license selected manufacturers and collect royalties for every “horseless carriage” built or sold in America, attempting to monopolize the industry. Selden’s organization filed suit against the Ford Company, which daringly had gone into business without a Selden license.
Forced to choose between closing the doors and fighting a group of attorneys who already had beat bigger companies into line, Henry Ford and his partners decided to fight. Eight years later, in 1911, after incredibly complicated court proceedings, Ford Motor Company won the battle, which freed it and the entire auto industry from Selden’s hold.
Despite harassments from Selden’s organization, the company kept improving its machines, making its way through the alphabet until it reached the model (T) in 1908. A considerable improvement over all previous models, this car was an immediate success. Nineteen years and more than 15 million model T’s later (1927); Ford Motor Company was a giant industrial complex that extended over the globe. Its cars had started an urban revolution. And the Ford assembly line ignited an industrial revolution.
During those years of hectic expansion, Ford Motor Company: Began producing trucks and tractors (1917). Became completely owned by Henry Ford and his son, Edsel, who succeeded his father as president in 1919 after a conflict with stockholders over the millions to be spent to build the giant Rouge manufacturing complex in Dearbourn, Mich. Bough the Lincoln Motor Company (1922). Built the first of 196 Ford Tri-Motor airplanes used by America’s first commercial airlines (1925).
By 1927, time had run out on the Model (T). Improved, but basically unchanged for so many years, it was losing ground to more stylish, powerful machines offered by Ford’s com...