July 27, 1978
Picture #1 – NUMBER ONE–America’s sweetheart, Mary Pickford, received this 1928 Model A Sport Coupe for Christmas from her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. She was enrolled as “Purchaser Number One” in the sale made through Edsel Ford. The car was added to the couple’s extensive collection at their Pick-Fair estate in Beverly Hills.
Picture #2 – Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy take it out on an innocent Model T in ‘Two Tars’.
Picture #3 – Quick Silver, queen of the Ford Tri-motor fleet on Exhibit in 1931.
Picture #4 – 1929 model T roadster, owned and displayed recently by Bill Reineke, once owned by mayor at Put-in-Bay.
Picture #5 (missing) – 1931 model A pickup truck, also owned and displayed by Reineke.
Picture #6 – 1951 Mercury, owned and displayed by Walter Motor Sales.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second and last installment of a story honoring Ford Motor Co. on it’s 75th Anniversary, and a tribute to the local Ford representatives. Photographs, other than those taken locally, used in the Ford story furnished through courtesy of Ford Motor Co.
Ford dealer Willis Hakes:
“There are stories that when a person got in their new car to drive it they forgot everything they had been told. I had a fried who bought a car and I went back to see him because that was always the way to get prospects. The men were working in the fields, so I talked to the lady of the house. She was glad to see me. She said her son had driven the car right through the garage. The end of the garage was four feet higher than the ground. She said her son had looked it over but couldn’t see nothing wrong. I took it out on the road and drove it and there wasn’t a thing wrong with it.
Hakes recalled that the unpaved roads were so dusty in those early days that sometimes the cars stalled…then you had to clean out the carburetor to get going again.
300 CARS A YEAR
“About 1913, -14, -15 our business really began to pickup,” Hakes recalled. “It got so in 1920 we delivered 300 cars a year…we had a man up at the fac- tory that drove cars through every day.”
During World War I the Fordson tractor business took up the slack on car sales. The farmers were raising all they could and really needed tractors, but it took some ingenuity to make sales. Hakes recalled how one year he demonstrated and sold the tractors by plowing 1100 acres for farmers. Soon there were all kinds of attachments for tractors…scrapers, graders, blades, lifters…in addition to the plows, harrows and discs. And all those items needed demonstrations to sell them.
OTHER FORD PRODUCTS
And as the years rolled by, Ford Motor Co. built many car models, also trucks and planes. By 1959 the 50 millionth car had been made. The trimotor plan they produced in 1926 was an innovation in aviation. For many years three of them were used to carry mail, supplies, and passengers from the Lake Erie mainland to the islands off shore near Port Clinton. The army, navy and airlines used the new Ford planes, including the B-24 bomber. They suspended the plane business in 1933, but it was revived in 1941 in time to produce planes for World War II. Along with the new planes, Ford also produced air- plane engines, reconnaisance cars, jeeps, swamp buggies and M-4 tanks.
IMPORTANT FORD DATES
There have been many important dates for Ford Motor Co. during their 75 years, but here are the ones which most readers may be interested in…and those remembered by some:
June 16, 1903-Ford Motor Co. filed articles of incorporation.
July 23, 1908-First car, 2-cylinder model A sold.
Oct. 1, 1908-Model T introduced.
April 1, 1913-Moving assembly line introduced.
Dec. 2, 1927-New model A-4 cylinder introduced.
March 9, 1932-Introduced first low-cost V-8 engine.
June 12, 1933-Lincoln-Zephyr production started.
Oct. 8, 1938-Mercury production started.
Oct. 1939-Lincoln Continental introduced.
May 26, 1943-Edsel Ford died.
Oct. 22, 1945-Lincoln-Mercury Division established.
April 7, 1947-Henry Ford died at age 83.
Jan. 26, 1962-Aeronutronic Div. played key monitoring role in space flight of Lt. Col. John H. Glenn.
Nov. 9, 1962-Fire destroyed the Rotunda.
June 5-9, 1965-Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas, designed and largely equipped by Philco (Ford Div.) began operation.
June 16, 1978-Ford Motor Co. celebrates 75th Anniversary.
The important dates locally, for the Ford Motor Co. dealership follow:
1908-Willis J. Hakes established Ford dealership.
1910-Hakes rented room on east Tiffin Street where Senior Citizens head- quarters are today…he having shared space with Reo agency for first two years.
1913-1920-Ford car sales soared.
1916-Hakes built second building on east South Street, opposite first one.
1949-Hakes revamped his first building and moved back into it…turning active management over to his son-in-law Glen Marshall.
1955-Ford Motor Co. establishes separate dealership for Mercury Division and appointed Charles Carroll.
1959-Northrup Motor Sales took over Mercury dealership, continuing until 1963.
1963-Walter Motor Sales Inc. appointed Mercury dealer, continuing today.
1967-(November) Willis J. Hakes died, at which time his dealership for Ford cars was dissolved and Reineke Ford Inc. became new dealer.
None of the 1903 Ford models have been discovered in Fostoria, but it is re- ported that Richard Briggs, of Spencerville, in Allen County owns one, and Larry D. Porter of Milan, in Erie County owns two.
Harvey A Geeting, aged 93, of West Manchester, Ohio, who has been a Ford dealer since 1914, also owns a 1903 Model A.