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Hell Raisers from Michigan — The Dodge Brothers’ Story
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Hell Raisers from Michigan, excerpts from the book The World of Automobiles, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Motor Car, The Great Cars / Dodge
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From the book The World of Automobiles, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Motor Car, The Great Cars / Dodge copyright 1974 by Orbis Publishing Limited, London distributed by Columbia House 51 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019 Chapter The Great Cars — Dodge: Hell Raisers from Michigan pages 550 – 552.
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Hell Raisers From Michigan – The Dodge Brothers’ Story John and Horace Dodge liked nothing more than a stiff drink and a good fight. Yet, they were astute businessmen
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The superintendent of the engineering works at Windsor, Ontario glowered at the two young workmen. “We’ve come for the job,” said the elder and more domineering of the two.
‘We need only one man,’ said the superintendent. The retort was swift. ‘We are brothers and we always work together. If you haven’t room for the two of us, then neither will start. That’s that!’ The Dodge brothers John Francis and Horace Elsin were like that. Though they were four years difference in their ages – John was born in 1864, Horace in 1868- they were as inseparable as if they were twins. Both were red-headed and both were quick tempered. They were, it was said, always ready to quarrel with anybody else or each other.
John was the natural leader, pushy and talkative; Horace was usually quiet, tolerant and slow-moving. They had left their birthplace, Niles, Michigan, and the early 1880s, determined to become engineers. They found work, and gained valuable experience, in the machine shops in Detroit and Windsor; their idea of relaxation, once the week’s work is over, was to spend Saturday night in the favorite saloon in the roughest part of downtown Detroit drinking themselves to a standstill.
One night, John ordered the bar owner to climb on to a table and dance. When the man refused, John pulled out a revolver and repeated his request. This time the man obeyed, while John hurled glasses at the mirror behind the bar. However, once he had sobered up, he happily paid for the damage.
In 1899, the brothers organize the Evans and Dodge Bicycle Company in Windsor to produce a four-point-bearing bicycle of their own invention. When a Canadian group made a successful takeover bid, the brothers moved back to Detroit, where they established one of the best machine shops in the Middle West. Order, cleanliness and efficiency words hallmarks consumed they were making components for the infant motor industry.
When, in February 1903, Henry Ford asked them to produce the chassis for his new Venture, the Ford Motor Company, the Dodges were already considering substantial offers from Oldsmobile and the Great Northern companies, but the seem to be for greater profit to be made from the new company so, On February 28, The two brothers signed a formal agreement with Henry Ford to provide 650 chassis for its first season of production.
The brothers undertook to deliver the chassis to Ford’s assembly plant on Mack Ave., Detroit, but the cost of $250 each – a total of $162,500. In return, they would receive the first payment of $5000 on March 15, provided that they could show that they had invested that amount in equipment to service the Ford contract. If that investment was then doubled, they would get the next $5000 a month later, plus another $5000 when the first batch of chassis was delivered. This $15,000 was to pay for the first sixty engines delivered, the next 40 would be paid in cash as they were completed, and thereafter there would be a regular payment every month.
It was an arrangement that suited both parties; the Dodges might not have had much formal education, but they were shrewd businessman, and had known Ford for several years.
Within a short while, the Dodge works were engaged virtually 100% on the building Ford chassis, employing a staff of 150. Deliveries started earlier July, and soon Ford was assembling 15 complete Model A cars a day. The Dodge is employed their staff on piecemeal rates, which resulted in some slipshod workmanship, but, as the brothers had invested $10,000 in the Ford company, and as John had been made a director, they soon rectified this state of affairs, and sales forged ahead.
When you Ford introduced the Model N in November 1905, it was announced that the mechanism for the new car would be made entirely within the new Ford factory on Piquette Avenue and that the Dodge brothers would make the chassis for the larger Ford only.
The brothers were now given 350 shares each in the Ford Motor Company, and John became Vice-President. However, as time went on, the independent Dodges became more and more the dissatisfied with the prices they were receiving for the transmissions, rear axels, drive shafts and forgings that they were supplying to Ford. They were worried, two, Ford might suddenly cancel their contract and leave them high and dry. By 1912, they were determined on a course of action: they would become independent of Ford, and build their own cars. In August 1913, John Dodge resigned from the board of the Ford Motor Company, though he maintained friendly relations with Henry Ford, and the brothers continued as shareholders. In fact, the 2000 shares that the brothers now held provide a large portion of the new venture. We were receiving over $1 million a year in dividends, and the properties were estimated to be worth $30- $40 million.
The Dodge car was unveiled on October 14 1914; it was produced in the new Dodge factory at Hamtramck, Detroit, which had been built on a site acquired in 1910. The car was a conventional design four- cylinder model of 3-1/2 liters capacity, with the power output of 25 bhp. There were two distinct features: the gear-change operated ‘back-to-front’, and the 12-volt electrical system Incorporated a North-East dynastarter unit which automatically restarted the engine, should it stall with the ignition switched on.
Thanks to the companies long association with Ford, the Dodge name was already well-known throughout the American auto trade, and soon more than 22,000 dealers across the states were clamoring for agencies for the new car.
The Marque’s rise was meteoric: By 1916, annual production was Americas fourth biggest, with over 70,000 cars delivered. A big boost to Dodge sales that year came when General ‘Black Jack’ Pershing ordered 250 Dodge staff cars to help him in his campaign against the Mexican bandit, Poncho Villa. Villa subsequently returned the compliment by adopting the Dodge as his official car-but he was killed while riding in it in 1923.
John and Horace Dodge may have been illiterate, but they coined a word to describe the Dodge’s performance that became every day term: dependability. In 1920, the Dependable Dodge was second only to the Model T in sales. By this time, the link with Ford been finally severed: alarmed by Henry Ford insistence, in 1916, that he would henceforth ignore dividends altogether, except for purely nominal payments, Dodges brought a suit to protect their income. It ended with Ford buying them out-and all the other shareholders in the Ford motor company for a total of $106 million, of which the Dodge Brothers share was $25 million. However, although the case was hard fought, personal relationships between the Dodges, and Henry Ford remained friendly and free of bitterness.
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Excerpt from the book The World of Automobiles, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Motor Car, The Great Cars / Dodge copyright 1974 by Orbis Publishing Limited, London distributed by Columbia House 51 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019 Chapter The Great Cars — Dodge: Hell Raisers from Michigan pages 550 – 552.
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