Word: edsel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Ford Foundation was originally established in 1936. Until 1948 it gave about $1,000,000 a year to colleges in Michigan. In the fall of 1948, however, Henry Ford and Edsel Ford willed almost $500,000,000 to the Foundation...
...save the ailing Ford Motor Co. The Ford car was second to Chevrolet, and the company had fallen far behind the industry in engineering and styling. World War II, with its big military orders, gave the company a breather. But at war's end, after the death of Edsel Ford and with the rapid aging of Old Henry, the tough job of saving the company was handed to young Henry (who signs his office memos...
...radical surgery. They shucked off all Old Henry Ford's peripheral enterprises, such as his Brazilian rubber plantations, his money-losing deal to make Harry Ferguson's tractors,* his experimental farms. They had another big problem: the inheritance taxes on the $208 million estates of Henry and Edsel. Luckily, Old Henry himself left $28 million in cash, and the family got the rest by loans from the company and sales of property. They kept control in the family by keeping the 172,645 shares of voting stock (now held in equal shares by Mrs. Edsel Ford...
...Look. There was also a revolution in car design and style. Old Henry Ford had never given a hoot about either ("Give them any color they want as long as it's black"). Edsel, who had a flair for design, brought out the Lincoln Continental in 1939. But he made little progress in getting the company to set up its own design department. Breech and young Henry made that a first order of business. They also hired George Walker, a noted independent Detroit designer...
...their mother. Mrs. Edsel Ford, and sister, Josephine. Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943; Henry Ford, aging and ailing, lived on till 1947. * The biggest share went to Ford Motor's Secretary James Couzens, later U.S. Senator from Michigan, who got $30 million. The Dodge Brothers, who had taken stock in lieu of payment for some of the engines they supplied Ford, got $25 million, which helped buttress their own famed company. * An act which later cost Ford $9,000,000 to settle Ferguson's patent infringement suit...