Ford: The Men and the Machine
Full-dress dynastic history from Henry I through Henry II.
Summary
Lacey, a biographer, wrote a family and company history covering three generations of Fords: Henry, his son Edsel, and his grandson Henry Ford II. It rests on company archives, family papers and interviews.
The Henry Ford sections cover the achievements and the pathologies together. Lacey documents the Model T, the moving assembly line and the five dollar day, and then the refusal to change the product, the destruction of Edsel through sustained humiliation, the antisemitic campaign in the Dearborn Independent, the recruitment of Harry Bennett to run a private security force that beat union organisers, and the mental decline during which Ford retained control while the company lost money at a rate that threatened its survival.
The Henry Ford II sections cover the rescue. Released from the Navy in 1945 to take over a company with no functioning accounting system, he removed Bennett, recruited the Whiz Kids including Robert McNamara and Arjay Miller from the Army Air Forces statistical control unit, and installed financial control. Lacey then traces the postwar decades: the Thunderbird and Mustang successes, the Edsel failure, the rise and dismissal of Lee Iacocca, the Pinto fuel tank litigation, and the family's continued control through the Class B shares.
The book is a narrative biography rather than a business analysis, and its strength is the family psychology and the personalities. Readers wanting analysis of Ford's manufacturing, its competitive position against General Motors and the Japanese producers, or its financial performance will find Brinkley or Halberstam more useful. Lacey is also writing in the mid-1980s, when Ford's Taurus-driven recovery looked more durable than it proved.
Key takeaways 7
- Henry Ford's refusal to replace the Model T cost the company its market leadership, and the refusal was personal rather than commercial.
- The company had no functioning accounting system by 1945 and could not determine which of its operations were profitable.
- Recruiting the Whiz Kids installed financial control and also began the shift toward finance-led management that later constrained the company.
- Harry Bennett's security operation ran the company's labour relations through violence, which delayed unionisation and poisoned it afterward.
- Family control through a separate class of shares has survived every crisis and every capital raising.
- Henry Ford's treatment of his son Edsel shaped three generations of the family's relationship with the business.
- A founder retaining control past the point of competence can destroy a company faster than any competitor.
Who should read it
Readers interested in founder succession, family control and the personal dynamics that shape long-lived companies.
Where it sits in the reference 3
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