Brother's Turn

Old Henry Ford had grown big making little cars; when he made bigger cars, (Lincoln and Mercury) he did not do as well. Young Henry Ford II thought he knew why: the bigger cars had always been subordinated to the manufacture of Fords. Last week, to give equal emphasis to all Ford-made automobiles, Young Henry set up the Lincoln-Mercury Division of Ford Motor Co. as a nearly autonomous unit, connected to the parent company only by policy and financial control.

By giving Lincoln-Mercury room to grow, he hoped to give more competition to General Motors and Chrysler (whose manufacturing units are all autonomous) in their medium and high price lines. Young Henry also had a man in mind for the job of bossing Lincoln-Mercury. Last week his brother, Benson, 28, was named a Ford Motor Co. vice president and put in charge of the new division. It was Benson's first major job in the company.

Stocky "Ben" Ford, an easygoing young man with a ready smile, has his grandfather's blue eyes and some of his restless energy. He also has a will of his own. He was the first of the grandsons (Henry II, Benson and William Clay, 22) to buck his grandfather's edict against smoking. Over family objections, he wangled his way into the Army as a private after he had twice been marked 4-F by his draft board (he is almost blind in one eye). He left the Army in January 1946, a captain in the Air Forces.

Like his older brother, Benson had already put in his time working in the Rouge plant. As a Princeton undergraduate he worked summers, and later, when he left Princeton (without a degree), he was a grease monkey in the dynamometer division. He married an automobile man's daughter, Edith McNaughton (her father was salesmanager of G.M.'s Cadillac Division), and in 1941 he was made a director of Ford Motor Co. All last year, as a member of the policy committee, he has been learning Ford finance. He has also been chafing at so much tutelage. What he needed, his family thought, was work and responsibility.

In his new job, Benson will have plenty of both. The L-M Division is now turning out 800 Lincolns, Mercurys and Continentals a day. By next spring, when three new assembly plants (Metuchen, N.J., St. Louis and Los Angeles) get into production, the company hopes to step up production and give Cadillac, Chrysler, Oldsmobile, Dodge, Pontiac and Buick a run for their money.

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