How Henry Ford Created The Successful Modern American Worker
Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from Hooniverse, Hemmings, Petrolicious, and The Wall Street Journal.
Henry Ford's Experiment To Build A Better Worker — The Wall Street Journal
Henry Ford is still fascinating. The guy changed how we look at industrial work not only in our country, but throughout the world. He not only built better factories, but he built a better person to work in those factories.
Early in 1914 Henry Ford, spurred by a combination of wanting to cut down the high turnover in his workforce and what seems to have been genuine altruism, announced that henceforth the base wage in his factory would be five dollars a day. This at a stroke doubled the prevailing salary for industrial work, and it caused a sensation.
The Fulvia Mixes The Elegant And The Strange — Petrolicious
Italian cars of this era fascinate me. I also never realize just how amazing the little Fulvia was, or how amazing Lancia was as a whole. They really did a lot of innovating. This is also the first time I've seen a Fulvia Berlina, and I really like it. A lot.
Before they were relegated to the foul indignity of foisting re-badged Chryslers upon uninformed and gullible 21st century Europeans, Lancia was once among the greatest of all Engineering-first automobile manufacturers. Their record for innovation stretches back more than a century, and among their pioneering achievements were the early uses of independent front suspensions, narrow-angle V4 engines, the first-ever stressed moncoque chassis (all three features of the 1922 Lambda) as well as the first publicly-offered five-speed (Series III Ardea, 1948) and first V6-powered production car (1950s Aurelia).
Family Albums And Four Speeds: More Hometown Automotive Archaeology — Hemmings
A cool trip through automotive time courtesy of Hemmings, wherein we look at what's then and what's now in Marlborough, New York. Very cool antique pics.
My father's maternal grandfather was an entrepreneur in my hometown; not only did he establish a bakery and a dry goods store, he built the brick Western Avenue Garage, which he rented out to local mechanics. We found some neat late-1910s-early 1920s photos of this garage – which was later used as the firehouse and is still standing, currently housing a business with warehouse space – in a crumbling photo album.
A 1996 Buick Century Wagon, Oh, And It's A Custom Built Dually — Hooniverse
If you don't think this is cool, you're on the wrong website.
Bask in the magnificent glory of the custom-built beast you see above. This is a 1996 Buick Century wagon, which has been given the extra awesome that comes with a set of a dually rear end.