TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87mil.frd

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 7KB | 130 lines

                                                                                October 12, 1987

"My Name Is on the Building"

Henry Ford II:  1917-1987


As the grandson of the founder of the Ford Motor Co., Henry Ford
II bore one of the most powerful names in American business.
He used it wisely to save the second largest U.S. automaker in
its dark days after World War II. He used it arrogantly when
he put down executives who dared to contradict him by reminding
them, "My name is on the building."

During the 35 years that he ran the firm, Ford gathered around
him men who became important leaders in their own right. Among
them: Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson and later head of the World Bank; Chrysler
Chairman Lee Iacocca; and Charles ("Tex") Thornton, who
co-founded Litton Industries. Yet none of them ever claimed to
understand the man they always addressed as Mr. Ford. When he
died last week of complications from pneumonia in Detroit's
Henry Ford Hospital, he was still unfathomable.

Almost untouchable on his corporate throne, Ford was perhaps the
most secure executive in America. A biographer once told him
that his book would give Ford the chance to set the record
straight about many things. Snapped Ford:  "Oh, let the fairy
tale continue. Who gives a damn?"  His most famous expression,
which he borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century
British Prime Minister:  "Never complain. Never explain."

Ford could afford to play high-stakes games, and he had fun
doing it. He stunned the automobile world in 1968, when he
offered the presidency of Ford to Semon ("Bunkie") Knudsen, then
a top executive at General Motors. Ford rented an Oldsmobile
and drove to Knudsen's house to offer him the job. Within 19
months, though, Ford fired Knudsen, who had made the error of
trying to get too chummy with the boss. One mistake:  he
constantly barged into Ford's office without knocking.

Born Sept. 4, 1917, to Edsel and Eleanor Clay Ford, Henry led
the privileged yet cloistered life of Henry Ford's grandson.
His boyhood included chauffeur-driven lifts to grammar school.
After Hotchkiss, Ford went to Yale, but he did not graduate.
Reason:  he paid a student to write a paper for him about
Thomas hardy's novels. Although admitting that he cheated, Ford
denied that he was caught because he accidentally dropped the
bill for the student's services into the professor's lap. "I
may be stupid," he told Biographer Booton Herndon, "but I'm not
that stupid."

After Yale, Ford worked in the company's engineering department
before going into the Navy in April 1941. But in August 1943,
a month before his 26th birthday, Ford was released from active
duty so that he could return to Detroit to help put the Ford
Motor Co. back on its feet. Years of erratic one-man rule by
old Henry had left the company a shambles, and the Government
was afraid the firm would not be able to produce the amphibious
vehicles and planes needed for the war effort.

The founder was then 80 and shakily in control after the death
the previous May of his son Edsel from cancer. In his dotage,
the old man had surrounded himself with managerial incompetents
and given them enormous power. Among them was Harry Bennett,
Ford's pistol- toting aide-de-camp, who had become the company
Rasputin. Young Ford demanded that his grandfather turn all
management control over to him. "I want a completely free
hand," he said. The old man finally relented. In 1945, at 28,
Henry Ford II took charge. His first act was to fire Bennett.

The corporate rebuilding job that young Ford faced was
formidable. The company was losing nearly $10 million a month,
and labor relations were chaotic. The new boss did what any
good manager in trouble does:  he sought help. Ford accepted
an offer made by a brash team of former Air Force officers and
signed them up in a package deal. He gave them salaries that
were princely at the time, ranging from $9,000 to $16,000.
Among the ten Whiz Kids, as they were called:  McNamara and
Arjay Miller, both of whom later became Ford presidents. Henry
raided GM for the man to head the new team, Ernest Breech,
possibly the best production chief in the U.S. at the time.

The Whiz Kids brought modern professional management to Ford.
They introduced financial controls and restructured the company
along divisional lines, much as Alfred Sloan had done at GM.
In the 1950s and 1960s, under Ford and Breech, the reborn Ford
Motor Co. prospered and came up with several winners, including
the sporty Thunderbird in 1954 and the Mustang in 1964. One
failure, though, became synonymous with marketing disaster:  the
Edsel in 1957. In later years, Ford was not as successful. The
company lagged behind its rivals in coming up with the right mix
of fuel-efficient cars after the energy crisis of the early
1970s. Ford insisted that Americans would never buy small
economy cars, and the firm did not have those models when
consumers demanded them.

Outside the office, Ford did what he wanted, when he wanted.
A reveler, Ford once led an orchestra through a swimming pool
while the musicians played When the Saints Go Marching In. He
divorced Anne, his wife of 24 years, in 1964 to marry Maria
Cristina Vettore Austin, a divorced Italian jet-setter. That
marriage broke up in 1980, and the settlement cost Henry an
estimated $15 million. He married Kathleen DuRoss, at the time
an operator of a Detroit disco, later that year.

Ford was serious about using the family name for worthy causes.
After the Detroit race riots in 1967 left 43 dead, Ford headed
an effort to find jobs for blacks. He lent his name and money
to the building of Detroit's Renaissance Center, a financial
flop that lost an estimated $140 million in its first four years
and had to be refinanced in 1983.

One of Ford's last decisions at the company was determining who
would the first non-Ford to head it. Iacocca had been in the
running, but Ford fired him in 1978. "I think you should
leave," he told him. "It's best for the company."  Iacocca
demanded to know why this was being done to the man who fathered
the Mustang and had just led Ford to two years of record
profits. Ford shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sometimes you
just don't like somebody."  In 1980 Philip Caldwell was picked
as Ford's successor.

Ford spent his final years living in England and Florida. He
joined Sotheby's, the art auction house, as vice chairman, and
he sat on the board of directors of a local bank. He continued
to work for his old company and at the time of his death was
head of the finance committee of the board of directors. To the
end, he remained as secure as ever. After all, his name was on
the building.

--By John S. DeMott