The First Ford Takes to the Road
By the spring of 1896, he was ready to make a trial run with his own horseless carriage. First he had to tear out part of the brick wall of his shed in order to get his machine into the alley. Once in the open, the engine was started, and the car bumped down the cobblestone street and continued successfully on its first short run around the block. A few weeks later, he drove it out to the homestead in Dearborn. His father was not impressed with the contraption.
These first tests meant more labor; hours of changing, adjusting, and repairing were ahead. During the day, Ford was the chief engineer of the Illuminating Company, but in his spare time, he was Ford the experimenter.
The signs of the times were encouraging. The great inventor, Thomas Edison, announced in the newspapers that the horse was doomed. Up in Lansing, R. E. Olds produced his first Oldsmobile. Alexander Winton of Cleveland drove his auto from Cleveland to New York, making what was called a “reliability” run. William K. Vanderbilt bought a car to race. All over the nation, people began to read and hear about the marvels of the new invention, of the men who were building cars, and of the races they held at fairgrounds and parks.
A new field was thus opened up for sportsmen. In Detroit, William H. Murphy, a prominent citizen, heard of Henry Ford’s car. Murphy and his friends saw an opportunity to get into the racing car business; they formed a company, called the Detroit Automobile Company, with Henry Ford as its chief engineer. At last he could leave the Illuminating Company and devote all of his time to automobiles. It was a bold move for a man with a family to give up a good job. Some of his friends and relatives told each other that he should have stayed where he was.
The original investment of Murphy and his friends was not enough. Improvements and changes in the model were made. Even though $68,000 was invested in the company, the hoped for production of many cars never materialized, and in January, 1901, Henry Ford left the Detroit Automobile Company.
Henry Ford went to work on a racer which he hoped would bring him new opportunities to manufacture automobiles. His chance came in 1901. It was announced in Detroit that Alexander Winton would race his world champion car, “The Bullet,” at the Grosse Pointe race track, a few miles from the city; Henry Ford challenged the champion.
When the day of the race arrived, stores and shops closed, and a parade of sixty-eight cars moved out to Grosse Pointe. Three cars lined up for the ten-mile race, but only Winton and Ford got away. At the end of eight miles, Ford was trailing Winton, but then the “Bullet” began to sputter, and it limped to the finish line behind the racer built by Ford. The newspapers the next day reported that Henry Ford was now in the first rank of American “chauffeurs.”
In November, 1901, the Henry Ford Company was organized to manufacture automobiles, but the venture was short-lived, and four months later, Ford was working for himself again. In his small workshop, he went to work on two new racers, the “Arrow” and the “999.” With the help of a draftsman, a mechanic, and a retired bicycle champion, the new cars were made ready for racing.
Ford found a bicycle champion, Barney Oldfield, to pilot his “999” in the Manufacturers Challenge Cup Race at Grosse Pointe. This time his car led the field to a new record, finishing a mile in front of his competitors.