The Racecar That Launched Ford

You Better Win: The History of Ford Racing

This episode explores the early, turbulent years of Henry Ford's career, focusing on how racing became a vital tool for proving automotive r

Key takeaways

Henry Ford used racing as a strategic marketing tool to prove car reliability when consumers were still wary of new technology.
His first major venture, the Detroit Automobile Company, failed after less than two years due to significant conflicts with investors.
The 1901 Sweepstakes race saw Ford defeat the legendary Alexander Winton, marking a pivotal moment for his reputation.
Early automotive technology was incredibly primitive, featuring vehicles like the Quadricycle that lacked brakes and used steering tillers.
Ford's competitive drive was often fueled by personal vendettas, such as being rejected for employment by rival Alexander Winton.

Main topics

Henry Ford's early business failures
The development of the Quadricycle
Racing as a reliability trial

Notable quotes

You better win.

Conclusion

A compelling look at how a relentless 'win or die' instinct laid the f

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Imagine it's 1901. You're standing on some rickety wooden grandstands packed into a crowd of 8,000 people. The air smells like gasoline and manure. Somewhere a brass band fights to be heard over the rattle of two strange machines warming up on the dirt track in front of you. Speaker 3 (0:25) and you have no idea how high the stakes are not just for the two men on the track and their hand-built race cars but for the future of american industry one of them is the most successful automaker in the country the reigning king of speed and the other is henry ford an unemployed engineer whose first company just went belly up if he loses here He won't get another chance. His dream of building a car for the common man will die today in the dirt. The flag drops. The engines scream and groan. The young engineer drives for his life, for his future. For him, racing wasn't a hobby. He didn't even like it. It was about survival. Back then, if your car couldn't win races, you had no credibility, no sales, no business. Before the factories, before the Model T, before the F-150 and the GT40 in Le Mans, it all started on this dirt track. This is the story of how that early win or bust mentality went on to become one of the biggest and most influential Speaker 2 (1:42) companies in the world. Wow. Speaker 3 (1:46) Hell yeah, dude. Great read. Speaker 2 (1:47) Yeah, dude. Thank you, bro. I am pretty excited to hear the rest of this tale. Yeah, Speaker 1 (1:52) man. Speaker 3 (1:52) I am James Pumphrey, joined by Vin Anatra, Zach Redpath. This is You Better Win, the history of Ford Racing. Speaker 2 (2:02) Henry Ford, a winner worth watching. First place, the number two Ford GT. We will keep LeBron racing and winning the greatest races in the world. Jim Clark pushes his Lotus Ford to the front. Ford Escort wins the RAC rally. Man against man. Machine against machine. The greatest Speaker 3 (2:20) who's to see him wouldn't want to be Bill Elliott, screaming car number nine, Ford in first. Speaker 2 (2:27) He had sent me a note in which he said, you better Speaker 3 (2:29) win. Speaker 3 (2:32) In this eight-part series, we're going to be diving deep into the stories that made Speaker 2 (2:37) Ford into America's race team. And I'll say, just in this episode alone, there's a lot of facts that are so surprising to me. Oh, yeah. And the fact is, they let us idiots go into the archives of Ford and actually dig through some of the coolest documents I've ever seen. Speaker 3 (2:55) Yeah, dude. Yeah. Back in the day, this is like back when Henry Ford was like... a guy. Speaker 1 (3:00) Yeah, I think everybody thinks of Henry Ford as like an engineer who just did a thing like right from the beginning, but he had a ton of failures before he even got to what we all know him for. Speaker 3 (3:09) Yeah, like right now there's multiple towns named after Henry Ford and we think of him as this like god-like creature, but like back in the day he was like a dude in his 30s. Dude, Speaker 1 (3:22) I thought he started Ford Motor Company like when he was like 28 or something. All his 20s and 30s is him trying to do a thing and not quite getting there. Speaker 3 (3:30) Early on in Henry Ford's career as an engineer, he Speaker 1 (3:33) had a dream. Speaker 3 (3:33) Build an affordable car for the masses. A lot of people thought that cars would change the world. But Henry was one of the few to realize that affordability would be key. That there was a world where everybody could benefit from this new technology. not just the elite. The irony now is that only the elite have horses and everyone has a car. Ford works his way up to become chief engineer of the Detroit branch of Thomas Edison's Speaker 2 (4:02) Electric Company. Speaker 3 (4:04) That's a pretty good job. But engine technology in this era was all about steam. So that's what he was working on in his spare time. Speaker 1 (4:13) So his first bet is like, all right, make a car. Using a steam engine. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:16) like a train. It's Speaker 1 (4:17) going to be a small Speaker 3 (4:18) train. Yeah, a Speaker 1 (4:18) car is just a small train. Speaker 3 (4:20) Also, you Speaker 2 (4:20) guys are overlooking the fact that in his spare time, he's thinking about building a car and starting something that will revolutionize the world. I don't do anything in my free time. Speaker 3 (4:29) Yeah, and you're not even a chief engineer of the Detroit branch of Thomas Edison's Electric Company. You're a YouTuber. I was going to say, I have Speaker 2 (4:35) an embarrassing job of doing a kid's job. And even in my spare time, I don't do adult stuff. In Speaker 3 (4:41) my spare time, I hug my dog. So he starts out by trying to put steam engine into a wagon, but then he's like, hmm, these are very heavy and impractical, and I keep getting all steamed up and wet. Speaker 2 (4:57) But my clothes are wrinkle-free. Speaker 3 (5:00) I mean, yeah, steam engine is super heavy. You have to have, like, a water tank. You have to have... coal you have to have a do you have to Speaker 2 (5:07) have guys shoveling coal into Speaker 3 (5:09) it yeah i think you shovel the coal it's a personalized train it's like a personal train yeah yeah that Speaker 2 (5:15) sucks a one-man train yeah one man train no tracks all right so he realizes Speaker 3 (5:22) that the steam thing for a car is definitely not working uh so he borrows some books about ethanol fueled engines from a buddy and he gets to work After Henry gets his engine working, the next step is maybe the riskiest of all. His first test drive. Speaker 1 (5:40) I'm just imagining you being like, I'm going to take this thing out for a test drive. Yeah. And you're like, that thing's going to explode. Speaker 3 (5:47) So on June 4th, 1896, Ford finished his first vehicle and he called it the Quadricycle. Makes sense. Bicycles too. It was powered by a four horsepower ethanol engine. with a two-speed transmission. Speaker 1 (6:01) Pretty sick he had a transmission. I was just thinking that. A two-speed? That's sick. If I'm building it for the first time, I'm like, power's going straight to the wheels. We'll figure that out later. Speaker 3 (6:09) There was only one problem. It wouldn't fit through the door of his shed. He knew the quadricycle was too big for the door, so he designed the car to be partially disassembled. But once the car was done, he decided that it would be just as easy to disassemble the garage. I can Speaker 1 (6:26) totally imagine you're like, somebody comes over, you're halfway through building it, they're like, how's it going to get out? And you're like, oh, I'll take it apart later. And then you get to it being done and you're like, this thing's not coming apart. If Speaker 3 (6:36) I don't want to take it apart because I know how hard it was to put it together. You know what? I've been thinking that the garage door should be bigger for Speaker 2 (6:47) a while anyway. Yeah. And it's, it's what? 1899 at this point. So I'm sure it was just like boards cobbled together, you know, pretty easy. It's Speaker 3 (6:55) also 2am. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:56) And according to the story, he grabs an ax, which is not, when you first said that, I was like, yeah, you would just like unscrew everything and then you'd put it back. And he's like, well, I got to get the car back in here eventually. So I'm just going to Speaker 3 (7:07) do it. It's 2am. He finishes his car. He fires it up. He wants to drive it. He's like, I'm driving this thing tonight. We've all been there. Yeah. We've all done it. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like registration, insurance. Speaker 2 (7:20) Nah. I'm driving this thing Speaker 1 (7:22) now. Speaker 3 (7:23) Now, instead of a steering wheel, which hadn't been invented, the quadricycle was controlled by a steering tiller, like a sailboat. Speaker 1 (7:30) Well, it's in front of him. I've seen the photo Speaker 2 (7:32) of this. Oh, Speaker 1 (7:32) the tiller's in front. I've seen the photo of the quadricycle. Yeah, it's like just a handle like this. sits right between you, and you kind of just go back and forth with it. Speaker 2 (7:41) That seems scary. Speaker 1 (7:43) It's amazing that the steering wheel came so late. I don't know why I would think that they had that at this point in time, but I guess it makes sense. You had to figure that out. What's the optimal way to steer this thing? Speaker 2 (7:52) But nothing had a... I guess boats had steering wheels. Pirate ships and stuff had... They had wheels. Speaker 3 (7:58) I've been to a Speaker 2 (7:59) nautical-themed restaurant. I know Speaker 3 (8:01) they have... Speaker 1 (8:03) Wheels. Speaker 3 (8:04) Yeah, they had steering wheels. Speaker 1 (8:05) Maybe it was just Speaker 2 (8:05) too hard to engineer. Speaker 1 (8:06) Yeah, you're like, just put a stick on it. Yeah, because Speaker 3 (8:09) boats are big. Anyway. Also, during the first test drive, Ford's assistant had to ride a bicycle ahead of the car as a lookout because the quadricycle didn't have any brakes. Wow, car Speaker 2 (8:21) guys were doomed from the start. Yeah. Because this is just nonsense that you would do with your friends now. 100%. Imagine finishing this thing, right? Your vehicle. You just built a car. You're like, I'm going to test drive it. But it doesn't have one of the three main functions. It goes, it steers, it doesn't stop. That's an Speaker 3 (8:41) insane move. Okay, so what's the solution to this? Okay, well, how about you grab the bike and Speaker 2 (8:47) you just look out. Just make sure nothing's coming. You get in front of the thing that I can't stop. Don't fall off the bike. Don't fall off the bike. Speaker 1 (8:55) Also, it's 2 a.m. Can you imagine the assistant's wife? He's like, Hello? And he's like, I need you to get down here, grab an Speaker 3 (9:02) axe, and grab your bicycle. He's Speaker 1 (9:04) like, sorry, honey, I gotta go. It's Henry. Speaker 3 (9:07) So that night it topped out at 20 miles per hour. Holy hell. With no brakes. No brakes Speaker 2 (9:13) at night, steering with a stick. With a guy in front of him on a, dude, 20 miles an hour on a bike. How come that guy has no name? Why is this guy remaining nameless? This hero. It's also probably like a dirt road. Speaker 3 (9:25) Riding a 1901 bicycle on a dirt road 20 miles an hour as this monstrosity ethanol-powered machine is behind you that doesn't stop. That guy deserves Speaker 2 (9:38) an Speaker 3 (9:39) award. All right. So it topped out at 20 miles per hour in testing, but that number probably doesn't do justice to the experience of driving it. Ford. kind of got famous in Detroit for his test drives. And not in a good way. His neighbors even gave him the nickname Crazy Henry, Speaker 2 (9:56) which could be a cool nickname. He's pretty on the nose. Also, we've heard what these cars sound like. That's disrespectful to be doing that at 2 a.m. Just firing up this backfiring gunshot thing to people who've never heard noises like that before or like rarely heard that Speaker 3 (10:13) noise. Yeah. Back then they rode horses. So over the next few months, Ford kept improving the quadricycle. Sturdier wheels. You're like, you know what? I should probably make the wheels sturdier. Better frame parts. Again, pretty funny. Liquid cooling and advanced brakes. The quadricycle was so promising. that Thomas Edison himself encouraged Ford to pursue his dream of building an affordable automobile. So in 1899, backed by a group of local investors, Ford Speaker 2 (10:42) co-founded the Detroit Automobile Company. Speaker 3 (10:45) And you'll never guess what happened next. Speaker 3 (10:50) The company tanked. Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:54) I mean, it wasn't the Ford automobile company, so I assumed it wasn't going to work out. I thought maybe it would work and they do a little rebrand. Yeah. A Speaker 3 (11:04) strategic rebrand. Well, it tanked. Ford started butting heads with his investors almost immediately. In the end, Ford's first company folded after less than two years at a loss of $86,000. which is more than $3 million today. Speaker 2 (11:20) Sheesh. Speaker 1 (11:21) Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah. I think he was butting heads with the investors because, like you said in the beginning, he knew you needed to race to prove yourself, and he wanted to do that, and the investors were like, no, just focus on building the car and weren't supporting him in this idea that you needed to go prove it somewhere. Speaker 3 (11:37) Well, yeah, I think he probably understood that this was kind of a hard sell to people because in order to... have a successful car for the masses, you have to convince a ton of masses that they need a car and that they can trust a car. Speaker 2 (11:53) Yeah. And he's building a whole new vertical of a customer that doesn't really exist. Right. So I'd imagine that you have to be a pretty wild, creative and engineer to come up with this crazy plan. So like, money people might have just looked at him like Speaker 1 (12:08) totally this guy's insane like what are you yeah he's probably like i want to let me build a race car so i can prove to everybody that these things are reliable and good and then i can sell them to everybody and they're like no just build cars for rich people but also i hate Speaker 2 (12:19) racing but i think we need to do it you know so Speaker 1 (12:21) you're Speaker 3 (12:22) like it's it's a wonky idea surprisingly in 1901 There were over 200 car companies trying to make it in America. I did not know that. Speaker 1 (12:31) Yeah. I feel like any industry that's emerging, there's always just a ton of little boutique companies. And then over time, you see them all like kind of consolidate