Henry Ford II

Henry Ford II was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 4, 1917, to Eleanor Clay Ford and Edsel Ford. He grew up alongside his brothers Benson and William, and sister Josephine. He graduated from The Hotchkiss School in 1936 and attended Yale University, where he served on the business staff of The Yale Record and joined the Zeta Psi fraternity, but left in 1940 before graduation.

When his father Edsel Ford, president of Ford, died of cancer in May 1943, Henry Ford II was serving in the US Navy. The elderly and ailing Henry Ford I re-assumed the presidency, though considered mentally inconsistent and no longer fit by most directors. During this period the company began to decline, losing over $10 million a month. Henry Ford II left the Navy in July 1943 and joined the company's management, then assumed the presidency on September 21, 1945.

He inherited a company with damaged European factories, financial losses, and declining domestic sales. He immediately adopted an aggressive management style, placing John Bugas in charge of company management and dismissing much of his grandfather's inner circle — especially Harry Bennett, chief of the Ford Service Department, who had become a lightning rod for efforts to prevent unionisation of Ford's labour force by violent means.

Recognising his inexperience, Henry Ford II hired former General Motors executives Ernest Breech and Lewis Crusoe from the Bendix Corporation. He also hired ten young statisticians from an Army Air Forces team, known as the "Whiz Kids." Two of them, Arjay Miller and Robert McNamara, later served as presidents of Ford. A third, J. Edward Lundy, held key financial roles for several decades. The "Whiz Kids" are best remembered as the design team for the 1949 Ford, taken from concept to production in 19 months; 100,000 orders were reportedly taken on the day it was introduced.

Ford became president and CEO in 1945. In 1956, the company went public, raising $650 million. On July 13, 1960, he was elected chairman, and resigned as president on November 9, 1960. He resigned as CEO on October 1, 1979, and as chairman on March 13, 1980.

During the early 1960s, Henry Ford II engaged in lengthy negotiations with Enzo Ferrari to buy Ferrari, with a view to expanding Ford's presence in motorsport and at the Le Mans 24 Hours in particular. Negotiations collapsed due to disputes over control of Ferrari's Scuderia Ferrari racing division. The failure led him to launch the Ford GT40 project, intended to end Ferrari's dominance at Le Mans — the Italian marque had won six consecutive times from 1960 to 1965. In 1966, after two difficult seasons, the GT40 Mark IIs achieved top-three finishes at both the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours before taking the first of four consecutive wins at Le Mans.

In the late 1960s, Henry Ford II became personally involved in the development of the Lincoln Continental Mark III, giving enthusiastic approval for its final exterior and interior designs. The resulting car made Lincoln profitable and spawned a three-decade market rivalry with Cadillac's Eldorado series.

He also reformed Ford's European operations, merging the previously separate British and German subsidiaries into a single Ford of Europe with a common product line. In the 1970s, new factories opened in Saarlouis and Valencia.

In 1973–74, Ford's then-president Lee Iacocca proposed purchasing powertrains from Honda Motor Company to minimise the cost of developing a small car for the North American market. Henry Ford II rejected the proposal, saying, "No car with my name on the hood is going to have a Jap engine inside." While Ford had been selling a Mazda compact pickup as the Ford Courier since late 1971, he resisted deeper Japanese integration in flagship North American passenger cars. In Iacocca's view, this set Ford several years behind GM and Chrysler in adapting to a globalised automobile industry.

Henry Ford II hired Lee Iacocca in 1964, who was fundamental to the success of the Ford Mustang, but fired him due to personal disputes in 1978. Iacocca later quoted Ford as saying, "Sometimes you just don't like somebody."

Henry Ford II formally retired from all positions at Ford on October 1, 1982, upon reaching the company's mandatory retirement age of 65, but remained the ultimate source of authority at Ford until his death. He died of pneumonia in Detroit at Henry Ford Hospital on September 29, 1987, at age 70. After a private funeral service at Christ Church Grosse Pointe, his remains were cremated and the ashes scattered.

In 1969, Henry Ford II was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1983, he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

Institutions named in his honour include the Henry Ford II World Center (the official title of the Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan), the Henry Ford II Honors Program at Henry Ford College, and Henry Ford II High School in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

He was married three times: to Anne McDonnell (married 1940, divorced 1964), with whom he had three children including Edsel Ford II; to Maria Cristina Vettore (married 1965, divorced 1980); and to Kathleen DuRoss (married 1980), by whom he had two stepdaughters.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.