CHAPTER ONE

 

THOSE EARLY YEARS

    The Cadillac

         Was A Ford

 

    In 1886, the first patent was issued for a working internal-combustion

engine automobile, and children yet unborn were destined to shape the

future of the motorcars which became known as the Lincoln and the Lincoln

Continental.  The automobile was not really an invention, it was the

application of various engine designs to a land transport vehicle.  The

internal-combustion engine was an evolutionary result of the cylinder pump,

the atomizer, and Volta's spark pistol.  As early as Leonardo da Vinci (and

even before his time) self-powered vehicles had been proposed.

    The French word "automobile" had not yet come to America when the news

from Germany of Karl Benz' and Gottlieb Daimler's gasoline-powered

carriages arrived.  Benz was assisted by Emile Levassor, and the third

vehicle they built was exhibited at the 1887 Paris Exposition.  A Belgian,

J. Etienne Lenoir, had constructed a lamp gas-powered carriage in the late

1850s, and reportedly sold it to the Czar of Russia in 1862.  In lawsuits

which arose many years later, his design was singled out as the first

example of a vehicle to be successfully powered by an internal-combustion

engine.

    John Lambert of Ohio City, Indiana, with his three-wheeler, may have

been the first American to build a gasoline-powered automobile.  He had

used stationary engines extensively prior to experimenting with a powered

vehicle.  Elwood Haynes of Kokomo, however, claimed to have been first. 

Haynes, with the assistance of the Apperson Brothers, used a Sintz boat

engine to power a four-wheeled buggy.  Charles and Frank Duryea of

Springfield, Massachusetts, had been working on various designs, and may

have actually beaten Haynes by as much as a year.  They were bicycle

mechanics like the Wright Brothers of powered flight fame.

    Hiram Percy Maxim, a practicing projectile engineer and Massachusetts

Institute of Technology graduate, lived in Lynn, Massachusetts.  He had

observed Nicolas Otto's lamp oil engine at work in the farm fields nearby. 

Maxim experimented with gasoline to power the three-cylinder, four-cycle

engine for a tricycle which he began constructing in early 1894.  He was

told at the local hardware store to leave gasoline alone because "most of

them who fooled with it blew 'em self up."

    Then there was George Baldwin Selden of Rochester, New York, the

inventor of "neophyte," who had also seen Otto's engine.  Selden was

granted U.S. patent number 549,160 on November 5, 1895, for an "improved

compression type Road Engine powered by liquid hydrocarbon."  Using the

guise of periodically revising his applications, Selden had been able to

extend the effective life of his patent.  In the 1890s, Colonel Albert Pope

was building electric motor carriages which were more commonly called

horseless carriages.  Pope purchased an interest in the Selden patent and,

with his associates, eventually tried to enforce this patent against all

American auto manufacturers.  However, in the second decade of the

twentieth century, the court ruled that Selden's concept applied only to

the two-cycle engine.

    Charles Duryea in 1893, Haynes-Apperson in 1894, and Henry Ford and

Charles King in 1896 had all constructed successful gasoline powered

carriages.  Charles King was what we might consider today a sports car

enthusiast.  In addition to being an early auto designer, he actually drove

the Benz, which finished second to Duryea in the Chicago Times Herald road

race of November, 1895.  At the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, Ransom Olds

displayed his steam-powered car.  The word "car" denotes a kinship to the

railroad rolling stock, and is slang or an abbreviated form of car'riage. 

George Whitney, who inspired Francis E. and Freelan O. Stanley, had built a

successful steamer in Boston prior to 1896.  The Whites and Stanleys built

reliable steam cars through the early twentieth century.  Vehicles powered

by gasoline engines, however, proved easier to start and to operate.  As

for "the Electrics," in 1899, Thomas A. Edison summed it up best when he

said that, "The need for constantly renewing is too great a handicap to

overcome."

    Olds soon abandoned steam power for gasoline engines.  The buggy with

its front floorboard curved up like a bobsled was called a "curved dash"

Oldsmobile, and was immortalized by the song "In My Merry Oldsmobile."  So

grand was the reputation of the Oldsmobile that the Reo Truck honored

Ransom Eli Olds by using his initials.  Alexander Winton, a bicycle

builder, founded the Winton Motor Carriage Company of Cleveland, Ohio, in

1897.

    The Winton became a major competitor of the Oldsmobile.  Automobile

manufacturing in the old days was a classic example of free enterprise and

no-holds-barred competition.  Alex Winton, it is said, even helped James

Packard get started in the business.  Packard purchased Winton Number 12,

but complained about it.  He was told to go build a better one himself, if

he could.  Packard did just that, and continued building premier motorcars

for years to come.  "Ol' Jim" was working under a car one day when a

prospective buyer inquired about its quality.  Packard is said to have

replied, "Ask a man who owns one."  This became the Packard company's

motto.

    Cars were not built to a standard configuration in those days.  The

average motorist of today would find it difficult to start and drive many

of these older cars.  By 1910 this began to change, and today's drivers

would feel quite at home behind the wheel of a 1920s car.  One

standardization adapted was the Packard H-pattern gearshift.  Even Ford

changed to this gear pattern at the end of the Model T series.

    The first president of the United States to ride in an automobile was

William McKinley.  On November 22, 1899, Horse Age magazine of New York

reported that earlier in the week President McKinley had ridden in F.O.

Stanley's Locomobile.  Theodore Roosevelt rode in many different makes of

automobiles.  One such occasion was in promoting A.P. Warner's new

invention, the speedometer.  Teddy's love for horses probably prevented him

from considering the transition to the motorcar completely.  William Howard

Taft's administration was the first to purchase and use automobiles.  Taft

had toured in a White Steamer during his campaign for office, and after he

became President, the executive branch purchased a Baker Electric, a White

Steamer, two Pierce-Arrows, and two motorcycles.  Although Taft was issued

Connecticut driver's license number 17,474, he was generally chauffeured by

Quartermaster Corpsman George H. Robinson.

    At the New York Automobile Show of 1900, some forty automakers

displayed over three hundred models ranging in price from $280 to $4,000. 

By 1910, there were 458,500 motor vehicles registered in the United

States.  Automobile manufacturing was largely centered in New England and

in the northeastern Midwest.  They were referred to as the Eastern and

Western companies.  The Eastern companies adapted to the Vanderbilt, Astor,

and Winthrop type of clientele, making higher priced cars for upper class

buyers.   The Western companies produced lower priced cars at higher

production rates, and catered to farmers and industrial workers.

    After the turn of the century automobile companies sprang up all over,

and promoters sold motorcar company stocks as get-rich-quick schemes. 

Studebaker had been in the wagon and carriage building business for many

years when the motorcar revolution exploded.  Pierce-Arrow, a wire

manufacturer building bird cages, entered the auto parts business by making

spoke wheels.  White was a sewing machine company.  In San Antonio, Texas,

Sam Pandolfo manufactured about seven hundred automobiles before going to

jail for pocketing too much of the stock revenue.  The automobile spawned

hundreds of other successful industries, two of which being the gasoline

stations and tire companies.

    Roads were poor prior to the First World War, especially in the West

and South, and automobile travel required the same planning as going on a

safari.  The Lincoln Highway Association was founded in 1913 to promote

quality roads across the United States.  (There is no connection between

the Lincoln Highway and the Lincoln Motor Company.)  Carl Graham Fisher of

Indianapolis helped to raise four million dollars for construction of a

public highway between Jersey City on the East Coast and San Francisco on

the West Coast.  Named the Lincoln Memorial Highway by Fisher, it was not

completed until the 1920s when it was designated as U.S. Route 30.  In

1916, Congress passed the Federal Road Act based on powers granted for

postal access roads, providing federal aid for state construction of

highways.  The Defense Highway Act of 1944 eventually gave this nation its

superhighway system.

    In 1933, a presidential commission concluded that "no other invention

so quickly influenced the national culture, transforming habits, thoughts,

and language as did the automobile."  At a 1971 meeting in New York City,

the American Historical Association formally recognized the growing

interest in automotive history, and the impact of the automobile on our

society.  Many of us who enjoy automobilia look upon it as a form of modern

art.  The sculpturing of steel, wood, and synthetics into the automobile is

as much an art form as stone carving and pottery-making was to the

ancients.

    Thus, the stage was set for our story.  America by the late 1900s was

on a collision course for a love affair with the automobile.  This story is

about one such automobile called a Lincoln.  In the second year of the

twentieth century, two automobile geniuses met, and set in motion one of

the most interesting series of events in American motorcar history.

                            A TALE OF TWO HENRYS

    Henry Ford was the eldest child of a rather humble Michigan farm

family.  He moved to Detroit in about 1885, and took a job as an

electrician for the Edison Company.  As early as 1889, he became interested

in the internal-combustion engine.  He had his own idea for a lightweight,

self-propelled vehicle.  Ford began work on his Quadricycle on New Year's

Day, 1894, and test-drove it two years later on Bagley Avenue in Detroit. 

Charles Brady King, also of Detroit, beat Henry by a couple of months. 

King and Ford were acquainted, and both had read an article in the American Machinist on how to construct a simple gasoline engine.  Oliver Barthel,

George Gato, James W. Bishop, and Edward S. "Spider" Huff all helped or

worked on the first Ford automobile.  The Quadricycle was sold to Charles

Ashley of Detroit because Ford was dissatisfied with its lack of a reverse

gear and other shortcomings.  Even if Henry Ford was not the inventor of

the first automobile, he may have been the first used car dealer.  The car

Henry originally sold for $200 was later repurchased, and now resides in a

place of honor at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.  Henry built

his second car in 1897, but always claimed to have built an automobile

prior to 1892.  It was, however, a rather unsuccessful steam tractor.  His

experience with this vehicle probably motivated him to begin experiments

with gasoline engines.  It is interesting to note that early Ford company

brochures mistakenly used the 1892 date for the Quadricycle.

    Henry Martyn Leland was the son of a Vermont teamster.  He was raised

in a devoutly Christian home, and named for a famous British missionary. 

At age seventeen, he went to work for a tool company that supplied machined

parts to the Springfield Armory.  It was here, and later at Colt Arms, that

young Henry Leland became a master machinist.  He was strongly patriotic, a

Unionist in political philosophy.  It was during these early years that

Leland adopted Abe Lincoln as his personal hero.  He would later name his

automobile company for the sixteenth President of the United States. 

Leland worked for Brown & Sharpe as a precision tool representative, and

developed manufacturing techniques for Westinghouse.  A little known fact

about Henry Leland is that he invented mechanical barber clippers.

    Henry and Wilford Leland, Robert C. Faulconer, and Charles H. Norton

started a milling and casting business in Detroit.  By 1899, it became a

major parts producer for Olds Motor Works.  Alfred Sloan of Hyatt Roller

Bearing Company finally convinced Leland to use roller bearings in his

engines and transmissions, but only after the Hyatt company met Leland's

accuracy standards.  Sloan later became president of General Motors. 

Leland's continued insistence on precision and accuracy made "Leland-built"

an industry byword for quality.  The Leland & Faulconer Mfg. Co. had

originally intended to build boat engines, but quickly became competitors

with the Dodge Brothers and other contract automotive parts suppliers.

    Both Henrys had sons.  Leland's son, Wilford Chester, was born in

1869.  Ford's son, Edsel Bryant, was born in 1893.  Bryant was Mrs. Clara

Ford's family name.  Less flamboyant and less famous than their fathers,

both sons nevertheless left their individual marks on the annals of

automotive history.

    Henry Ford is generally credited with having failed in three or four

car companies.  However, if you do not count experimental car companies,

race car ventures, and corporate reorganizations, there was really only the

first failure.  His second of two ventures in association with William H.

Murphy later became part of General Motors.  Henry Ford's auto firm, in

association with Alex Y. Malcomson, evolved into the Ford Motor Company.

    In 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was organized.  The

incorporators were Frank Hacke, Pat Ducy, Wil Maybury, Saf Delano, Frank

Eddy, Bill Murphy, W.C. McMillian, Frank Alderman, Fred Osborn, Clarence

Band, and Henry Ford who was also chief engineer.  Only about ten or twelve

cars were ever produced by this company.  Henry Ford was less than thrilled

with his small interest in the company's profits.  He was more interested

in developing a new type of car than in producing substandard machines. 

The design he had in mind would eventually become the 1903 Ford Model A.

    Frank Alderman had been promoting sales of a new model Detroit

automobile.  In November 1901, he persuaded Murphy to endorse renaming and

reorganizing the Detroit Automobile Company into the Henry Ford Company. 

Ford was given one-sixth interest and a cash advance to develop his new

prototype.  For the next eight months Henry fiddled while Murphy and the

rest of the stockholders burned.  Bill Murphy and Henry Leland attended the

same local Presbyterian Church.  One Sunday in the spring of 1902, the two

were discussing production problems at the Henry Ford Company.  At the

request of Murphy, Leland agreed to have a look and make some suggestions. 

He did, and Ford departed.  This seemingly insignificant incident touched

off a chain of events that affects the automobile industry to this day.

    Henry M. Leland was a tall elderly, white-whiskered gentleman with a

reputation for mechanical perfection.  His analytical reasoning and quest

for precision made Leland a roll model for the modern automotive engineer. 

Henry Ford, on the other hand, was a wiry, shoot-from-the-hip,

experimentation inventor.  The two originally met at the Detroit Auto Show

in 1901.  It was not said that the two Henrys disliked one another.  In

fact, they seemed to have the highest regard for each others' professional

achievements.  Leland just could not abide nonprecision workmanship, and

thus was overly critical of Ford's designs.  Leland knew that the

Oldsmobile engine, which his company was currently building, was already

superior to Ford's engine.  Ford probably did not give a damn.  What he

really wanted to do was build a race car that could challenge the Winton

Bullet.  To say that Ford and Leland locked automobile horns is a pun one

can hardly pass up, but it was probably just time for a change of drivers.

    Leland formally took over management of the Henry Ford Company at the

shareholders' behest.  In August, 1902, the corporation's name was changed

to Cadillac Automobile Company (thus the first Cadillac was really a

Ford).  The Faulconer & Leland shop provided the engines for the new

Ford/Cadillac, it was good business for both companies.  Other parts were

obtained from contract vendors like the Dodge Brothers.  The Dodge's

machine shop had built transmissions and parts for the Oldsmobile.  The

Dodges later became major suppliers to the Ford Motor Company, and for a

short time were stockholders.  Ultimately, the Dodge Brothers would build

their own automobiles.

    Some General Motors historians try to overlook the Ford/Cadillac

lineage.  To disprove the similarity between the automobiles, they point to

the improvements Leland made in the Ford design, most notably the

two-cylinder versus the original one-cylinder engine.  Ford had told the

Detroit auto people that he himself thought it was an inferior product and

needed more development.  Murphy, however, continued to push for

production.  The L-section frame versus the original channel-type frame was

another improvement implemented during early Cadillac production. 

Additionally, the Leland spring design was semi-elliptical and attached

with gooseneck hangers which resulted in a smoother ride.  These

differences, although minor, were valid changes made to the early

production Model A Cadillacs.  To be fair, Ford Motor Company went to

almost the same lengths to avoid mentioning Leland's role in the

origination of the Lincoln.

    The ridiculous enters when one argues that the Model A Cadillac came

out before the Model A Ford.  Of course it did.  Henry Ford had started the

Detroit (Ford/Cadillac) automobile two years earlier.  The absurd comes in

when one argues that the Cadillac was left-hand steering, and the Ford was

European right-hand.  A photo entitled "First Cadillac" and dated 1902,

shows Wilford Leland in the left seat with Alanson Bush behind the wheel on

the right side.  Ford and Cadillac both went to left-hand steering shortly

thereafter.  In horse-drawn carriages, the driver often sat on the right to

allow free use of a whip in the right hand.  Automobiles switched the

driver to the left side to allow passengers, often ladies, to exit to the

generally less-muddy curb side.  Note that the Ford Model A, mentioned

before, should not be confused with the famous Model A built by Ford

between 1929 and 1931.  The original Model A was the predecessor of the

Ford Model N and Model T.

    In 1905, Leland & Faulconer merged with the Cadillac Automotive

Company, and the new Cadillac motorcar became the industry standard.  Henry

and Wilford Leland retained about 19 percent ownership in the Cadillac

company.  The Cadillac won engineering awards like the Dewar Trophy from

Great Britain for the precision manufacturing of standardized parts in

1908, and for its electrical system in 1912.  Henry M. Leland was president

of the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) for several terms.  The title

"Master of Precision," given him by the British, became a synonym for

Leland, and will remain his personal badge of courage throughout automotive

history.

    A friend of Henry Leland, Byron Carter, once stopped to assist a lady

driver crank start her automobile.  The engine backfired, and Carter was

struck by the handle.  He later died of the injury.  This incident moved

Leland to work closely with Charles Kettering of Dayton, Ohio to develop a

self-starter.  Kettering was a noted inventor and founder of the Dayton

Electric Company.  He adapted a high torque electric motor to the

mechanical task of cranking the engine.  His company, Delco, later became

part of General Motors and Charles Kettering was influential in GM

management for many years.  Another starter, the Rushmore, was developed in

1911.  It was available on the Simplex and other automobiles at extra

cost.  The Rushmore design became known as the Bendix drive, and its design

was closer to starters today than was the Kettering.

    David Dunbar Buick had made considerable money by inventing a process

for enameling bathroom fixtures.  He turned his profits and efforts towards

the development of an overhead valve engine in 1903.  The Buick Motor

Company, a partnership with David Buick and the Briscoe brothers, was sold

to Billy Durant in 1904.  Benjamin Briscoe and Jonathan Maxwell founded the

United States Motor Company, a consortium of 130 firms, which folded in

1912.  William Carpo Durant borrowed from Wall Street's J.P. Morgan to form

International Motors Company.  After a split with Morgan, Durant scratched

out the word  "International" on the company stationery and wrote "General"

above it.  Leland and Murphy sold Cadillac to Durant in July of 1909, and

became General Motors stockholders.  Wilford C. Leland was instrumental in

saving the entire General Motors conglomerate from bankruptcy in 1910

through tactful negotiations with GM's New York bankers.  The elder Leland

was in Europe at the time, Wilford succeeded where Durant had failed.

    Henry Ford had left the old Detroit Automobile Company in March of 1902

with the designs for his race car, a few hundred dollars in cash and the

company's name which was his birthright anyway.  Ford took up racing with a

passion.  Automobile racing had come of age with the turn of the century. 

Most early races came down to who could finish at all, let alone who could

finish first.  The first reported race in America was won by J. Frank

Duryea in 1895.  Only the Duryea and the Benz automobiles completed the

race.  The fifty mile run between Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, took nine

hours.  In 1901, the Cleveland built Winton came to Detroit to race.  The

hometown entry was Henry Ford's two-cylinder, seat-over engine racer.  The

Winton took the first turn in a cloud of dust, but developed engine

problems.  Ford won the race with an average speed of 44.8 miles per hour. 

Henry was overheard saying, "I'll never do that again.  I was scared to

death."

    Tom Cooper and Henry Ford built a new racer, naming it the "999" for a

famous locomotive of the era.  It was a four-cylinder, seven-square engine

that developed approximately eighty horsepower, so large that the driver

was now placed behind the engine.  This also resulted in a lower and

improved center of gravity.  This car was used by Barney Oldfield to set

the first mile-a-minute record for an oval track.  A bicycle racer, Berna

Eli Oldfield had been hired as the Ford competition race driver.

    In 1903, Carl Fisher organized a race at Indianapolis.  Barney won it

in the "Red Devil," a sister car to the "999" speedster, and three new

phrases were added to the American language.  They were the Indy race,

Barney O'field, and Daredevil driver.  Today, the "999" locomotive is on

display at the Chicago Museum of Science beside the Burlington Zephyr.  The

"999" speedster is housed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

    The last speedster Henry Ford ever drove was the "Arrow," when he set a

new straight course world's record with a speed of 91.37 miles per hour on

icy Lake St. Clair.  Earlier records were set by Alex Winton in the "Bullet

Number 2," and by Ransom Olds in his eight hundred pound "Pirate" with a

speed of 53.5 miles per hour at Daytona in 1903.  Ford's record set in 1904

was broken in 1905 by Louis Ross in a Steamer traveling 94.73 miles per

hour.  In 1906, a Stanley Steamer set an astonishing record of 127.57 miles

per hour.  Either through luck or calculation, the publicity from racing

created widespread public interest in Henry Ford's cars.

    With the backing of Alex Malcomson, plus assistance by financial wizard

James Couzens and metallurgist Harold Childe Wills, Henry incorporated the

Ford Motor Company in June of 1903.  Wills drafted the famous Ford script

logo which is second only to the Coca-Cola logo in worldwide recognition. 

Henry Ford finally overcame his hang-ups about production and manufactured

thousands of cars during the next five years.  Dodge Brothers produced

chassis and parts for the lightweight low-cost Model N.  In 1908, the Model

T and a rather unsuccessful large car, the Model K, were introduced.  This

Model K was probably the namesake of the 1931 successor to the Model L

Lincoln.  The Ford Model K had a six-cylinder engine, which Henry Ford

disliked, and upon which Chevrolet capitalized.  Colorful, quotable Henry

always claimed that an engine should have no more cylinders than a cow has

teats.  One assumes Henry had two cows in mind when he went to the V-8.

    Swiss race driver Louis Chevrolet had designed a six-cylinder engine

for the Buick in 1911.  Durant was impressed with the name Chevrolet which

means "little mountain goat."  He reintroduced the GM Republic calling it

Chevrolet, but fired Louis for smoking cigars in his office.  The Chevrolet

Model L (Light-six) and Model C both used six-cylinder engines.  In 1914,

the four-cylinder Model H Chevrolet "Royal Mail" was introduced to compete

with Ford, thus beginning a long-standing rivalry.  Louis Chevrolet's

Frontenac Motor Company would later build racing equipment for modifying

Model T Fords.

    In 1909, after acquiring Cadillac, Durant offered to purchase the Ford

Motor Company.  Selden and Pope had formed a group called the Association

of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) to enforce Selden's patent,

going first after Winton and then after Ford.  Ford had just lost the first

round of court battles when the Durant offer was made.  Henry and Malcomson

agreed to sell to GM for eight million dollars, but Henry wanted cold,

hard, train-ridin' dollars.  Durant had put most of his deals together

through stock trades, and was unable to borrow that kind of money which was

a fortunate turn of events for the fledgling American automobile industry.

    Durant's general manager, Charles Nash, left GM to produce the Jeffery

Rambler.  He and James Storrow, also formerly of GM, formed the Nash Motor

Company in 1917.  Walter Percy Chrysler replaced Charles Nash, and by 1920

was being paid a half-million dollars a year to manage General Motors. 

This arrangement ended abruptly during a dispute over building a new Buick

plant in Flint, Michigan.  The cause of the dispute was for the same reason

as the Ford and Leland split (one company was not large enough to support

two large egos.)  Jonathan D. Maxwell had worked on some of the original

Haynes cars in Indiana, but his automobile company was now floundering. 

Walter Chrysler took over the Maxwell-Chalmers company, and built it into

the Chrysler Corporation.  Chrysler bought out Dodge Brothers in 1928. 

Another dynamic automotive entrepreneur of this period was Erret Lobban

Cord.  He founded Cord, Auburn, and Duesenberg.  Cord was born in 1894.  By

the time he was thirty-five years old, he owned Lycoming Engine, American

Airlines, Stenson Aircraft, and New York Shipbuilders.

    World War I was now occupying much of America's industrial output. 

Billy Durant, like Henry Ford, was a devout pacifist.  The Lelands were

not.  So H.M. and Wilford left General Motors to produce airplane engines

for the war effort.  They founded the Liberty Engine Company which produced

over six thousand, 400 horsepower, V-12 aircraft engines between August,

1917 and January, 1919.  Most of these engines never saw action in Europe,

but they became the mainstay of the Army Air Corps and the U.S. Air Mail

Service for a decade to come.  The Liberty engine was used by Donald

Douglas, creator of the famed DC-3, on an early aircraft that he built for

D.P. Davis.  The Liberty engine also powered the aircraft of Army

Lieutenants Kelly and Macready, a Fokker T-2, on its record-setting nonstop

transcontinental flight in May, 1923.  The Allison Engine Company, later

part of General Motors, began in Indianapolis as a shop which converted

Liberty engines to an inverted configuration.

    Of all those who disliked the Selden patent claim, Henry Ford opposed

it the most.  The Wright brothers tried to patent the airplane, but Glen

Curtiss added an aileron to his wing, and thus circumvented their claim. 

Ingenuity is the American way.  In 1911, after the introduction of the

famous Ford Model T, the courts ordered the ALAM group and Ford to

construct actual prototypes.  The Selden design was a paper only patent, no

working model had even been constructed.  At last, Henry had the

advantage.  He based his working model on the 1860 Lenoir design, and won

the case.  Henry Ford wanted control of the Ford Motor Company, and by

1919, he had acquired controlling interest.  The Ford Motor Company

perfected mass production techniques, the assembly line, and introduced the

five-dollar workday.  The rest, as they say, is history.

                          THE LINCOLN IS CONCEIVED

    There were a few earlier Lincoln automobile companies, but none were

very successful.  The Lincoln Auto Company of Jersey City, organized in

1908, and the Lincoln Carriage and Automobile Company of New York in 1905,

probably never built any motor cars.  The Lincoln Square Garden Company of

Long Island was organized to build and sell motor cars and motorcycles in

about 1910, but there is no evidence that any were produced.  The Lincoln

Automobile Company of Lincoln, Illinois, began in 1907 at the Kate's

machine shop.  Until 1909, they produced a Buggy, a Runabout, and a Surrey

model.  All were seat-over-engine, two-cylinder, air cooled, and chain

driven.  The earliest Lincoln was the Electric of Cleveland, Ohio.  Built

in 1900, it developed 2 1/2 horsepower, and was powered by 420 pounds of

Willard batteries.  The vehicle received a lengthy write-up in the November

6th, 1900 issue of Motor Age.  The company abandoned the Electric Runabout

and returned to electrical component manufacturing the following year.

    Sears, Roebuck and Company sold several versions of a seat-over-engine,

two-cylinder Runabout between 1908 and 1912.  Most of the parts for the 14

horsepower, tiller steering buggy were actually produced by the Lincoln

Motor Car Works of Illinois.  When Sears dropped the car from its catalog,

Lincoln continued to market the Model 24 Runabout for $585.  In 1913, they

introduced a front-engine, three-passenger Light Touring for $650.  The

Lincoln motor works on Harrison Street in Chicago discontinued motor car

production in 1914.  The "Lincoln Highway" Roadster was built by Lincoln

Motor Car Company of Detroit in 1914.  The company was the successor to

American Motorette.  Its design greatly resembled the Lincoln Works Light

Touring, both had Renault-style front ends and odd seating arrangements. 

The Lincoln Highway had four-cylinders, and sold for $500.  Only a few were

ever produced.

    Henry Leland was a wealthy and successful industrialist, but found

himself and the company he had built out of work at the end of World War

I.  Many dedicated and patriotic employees had followed him from Cadillac

in 1917.  Forming a new automobile company seemed the logical course of

action, and it would put his six thousand skilled employees back to work. 

More specifically, it would fulfill Leland's dream of building the

"Permanent Motorcar" (an automobile built with such precision and care that

it would run for decades with only routine maintenance.)  The Lincoln

motorcar was born.  The "boys," as Leland called them, began designing the

first Lincoln in early 1919.

    Most of the giant automobile makers crossed paths several times in the

next decade, and automotive historians refer to that era as "the levee upon

which great men stood."  By March of 1920 a Model T Ford was selling for

$570,  production was approaching a million cars and trucks per year, and

unfilled orders were backed up for six months.  There were, however, some

signs that the auto market was softening.  It was into this environment

that the new Lincoln motorcar was introduced.