[rotorwrench]

Every major manufacturer had their status cars. Most status cars were not built to make money as much as they were for prestige. Henry bought Lincoln for two reasons. He wanted to give Edsel something else to do instead of constantly asking for changes to things he didn't want changed. Edsel had complete control of Lincoln and it showed in all the designs they came up with while Bob Gregorie was head of his design department. Make no mistake, if Edsel didn't like the designs, he kept them working on it till he found it to be acceptable. Henry's other reason for purchasing Lincoln was to get even with Henry Leland for what he felt was a slight in the take over of the 1st Ford plant that became Cadillac Motor Co in those very early years of the 20th century. While Ford likely didn't make a lot of money on the Lincoln cars, they probably didn't lose much money either.

Henry Ford always put a lot of the profits back into the company to increase the capability to make more and more of the product in house. By the end of the 1930s, the company had much less sub contract work than they did at the beginning. When you see what the company was capable of building, you can see where the money went. Henry's major problem in the late 30s was the auto unions and that near killed him.

When Ford started building the Willow Run bomber plant on Ford land near Ypsilanti, most of that project was paid for by the government after the plant was built so that they could set it up in their own way of assembly line manufacturing. Henry had been accused of profiteering during WWI so he wasn't going down that slippery slope again. They leased the property back from the government until production ceased. They had the option to buy it back but that never happened. The company went on to build the B-24s, the R2800 engines, the T-16 universal carrier, the M4A3 Sherman tank variants with the big overhead cam V8, the M-10 tank destroyers, as well as many thousands of jeeps and trucks for the war effort and this doesn't count Canada or the UK. They may not have made much profit during the war but they didn't lose much of anything.

Edsel had his hand in the war effort from 1940 till he died and he was key in getting the right people to do a lot of the work to get this massive effort cranked up. It's just too bad he didn't live to see it through. Henry had his first stroke in 1938 so there was no way he could have handled the daily grind of all that effort. He was in effect superseded by his own family by bringing in Hank the Deuce to take the reins after his father died.

I will always look at Edsel as one of the true American Heros that against all odds, made the important things happen. Ford Motor company would have faded away into obscurity if it hadn't been for Edsel Ford. Some folks consider his life a tragedy but he did a lot in that short life of his and I'm sure a lot of it was well lived despite the obstacle course his father put him through at work. He triumphed in the end because he never gave up the good fight.