Lincoln Continental

By Jack Nerad

Henry Ford must have received some special satisfaction on February 4, 1922, because on that day he purchased the Lincoln Motor Company, which was being run by his long-time nemesis, Henry Leland. Some two decades before, Ford and Leland had their first run-in.

On the strength of his racing exploits, Ford was a principal participant in the founding of The Henry Ford Company, a successor to the Detroit Automobile Company that had been on of the first Michigan-based firms to enter the car manufacturing business. Soon after he was named chief engineer of the company that bore his name, the board of directors hired Henry Leland as a consultant.

Leland was a name to be reckoned with in early Twentieth Century Detroit. One of the most skilled industrial engineers of his time, Leland had cut his teeth working for Samuel Colt in his firearms factory. There he learned the crucial lesson of building parts to such close tolerances that they were "interchangeable." (Until Colt's monumental industrial achievement, parts were individually fitted to the product, so, for instance, a rifle stock of an individual gun might not fit another gun of the same type.) After leaving Colt, Leland set up his own machine shop, Leland and Falconer, and the firm entered the automobile business by building engines for Ransom E. Olds and his Oldsmobile.

Certainly, Leland had impressive credentials, but Henry Ford was a man with his own ideas, and the last thing he wanted was Henry Leland hanging over his shoulder. A boardroom brouhaha ensued, and Ford decided to take his dreams elsewhere. With a $900 settlement in his pocket he took his good name and good ideas on the door and formed Ford Motor Company. Meanwhile, what was The Henry Ford Company renamed itself Cadillac Motor Car Company with Henry Leland at the helm.

While Henry Ford was building the unsophisticated Model T into the sales success of the century, Leland's Cadillac enjoyed success at the upper echelons of the American market. He used the concept of precisely crafted, interchangeable parts to capture the Dewars Trophy for automotive excellence, and later his company introduced the first commercially successful V-8 engine and the first commercially successful electric self-starter.

After Cadillac was acquired by William Crapo Durant as part of the newly organized General Motors Corporation, the meticulous Leland ran afoul of the somewhat more speculative members of GM management. Soon Leland left to found Lincoln Motor Company, named after his personal hero and, coincidentally, the first president he had voted for.

Leland's new company immediately embarked on the production of Liberty aircraft engines. Then, with World War I over, Leland decided to re-enter the luxury automobile business.

His first model, the "L," was introduced to the public to great fanfare in 1920. As one had come to expect from Leland, the car was a superior product. Its 60-degree V-8 engine was very probably the most technically advanced American engine of its era, and the rest of the car was equally well-designed and crafted.

Leland's mistake, however, was timing. Soon after his first Lincoln came to market, the market started going away. America was going through a post-war boom-and-bust cycle, and Lincoln was whipsawed. By New Year's Day 1922, Lincoln Motor Company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Who was there to pick up the pieces? Why, Henry Ford, who at the urgings of his 25 year old son, Edsel, decided to invest some of his company Next Greatest Car>>