The Winner

For months the world-straddling empire of Henry Ford has quivered and groaned like a leviathan with acute indigestion. Cause of the upheavals has been the rival ambitions of the empire's two powerful princes: tough Director Harry Bennett and smooth Production Boss Charles E. Sorensen. Last week, the empire had its biggest convulsion of all.

In Miami Beach, Charlie Sorensen called reporters to his winter home. Broad-shouldered, tanned, and looking fit from long afternoons on the sunny beach, he' issued a statement: "I am resigning from the Ford Motor Company after 39 years of continuous service. . . . I am compelled to take a much-needed rest. . . ."

Just what ailed him, he did not say. But it was soon plain that it had little to do with his health. Detroit motormen scoffed at the idea that he has lost any of his piston drive. The Detroit Free Press came out flatly: Sorensen was fired "while he was fishing in the Bahamas out of reach of the telephone." It then went on to say that spry old Henry Ford himself had swung the ax. This was as shocking to some motormen as if the wizard of Dearborn had slashed off his own right arm.

Up Sorensen. Danish-born Sorensen came to the U.S. at the age of four. As a youth he worked as a patternmaker in his father's stove shop in Detroit, caught the eye of Henry Ford by turning out patterns no one else seemed able to make. He showed the same rule-of-thumb genius when he went to work for Ford, translating Ford's production ideas into complex patterns of men & machines spilling out cars. When Ford dreamed of an activated production line, Sorensen tied a rope to a chassis, pulled it through the plant to see how the idea would work. Harddriving, brusque, he had little patience with underlings. One day a foundry foreman said he did not think he could turn out the 2,000 engine blocks a day that Sorensen wanted. Snapped Sorensen: "Then I'm afraid you're fired."

He squabbled with William S. Knudsen, took the quarrel to Ford for a decision. He won, but Knudsen left Ford shortly after for General Motors, where he took pleasant revenge by boosting Chevrolet sales past Ford's.

Despite his backbreaking job of bossing all Ford production--and overseeing the building of Ford plants around the globe--Sorensen had plenty of time for deep-sea fishing, yachting (his cutter won the 1942 Detroit-Mackinac race), bridge and music. (He still plays the violin.)

When World War II came, "Cast-Iron Charlie" (socalled because of his love for casting v. machining) switched Ford from cars to airplane motors, jeeps, tanks, etc.

Up Bennett. Henry Ford kept mum on who will replace Sorensen. Likeliest prospect: plumpish, soft-speaking Ray R. Rausch, 49, Ford director, production boss of the Rouge, and favorite of Harry Bennett. Just how well Rausch will measure up to Sorensen, productionwise, is a question that reconversion will probably answer. But with Sorensen out, there is no one in the empire now--outside of Henry and Henry II, Ford vice president--to challenge the absolute power of the one-time sailor, boxer and Ford bodyguard, Harry Bennett.

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