Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5, Chapter 14, Exit 10 (Mile of Cars Way): Ford Motor Company
From Mile of Cars Way exit, turn right on Mile of Cars Way, to National City Blvd, turn left to 2050 National City Boulevard, on the left.
NATIONAL CITY, California –Among the car dealerships on National City’s Mile of Cars is Perry Ford, owned by the Perry Automotive Group which boasts dealerships in various California cities including Escondido, Poway, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. Not all are Ford dealerships; the Perry Automotive Group has also sold Dodges, Infiniti’s, Jeeps, Lincolns, Mazdas, and Volkswagens. The group is headed by Perry Falk, who lives in La Jolla with his wife Deborah in a 4,608 square-foot home that he purchased for $6 million. The home once was owned by famed mystery writer Raymond Chandler.
Our story is not about Perry, but rather about the Ford family, manufacturer of the product his agency and others around the county sell. We’re interested in the turnaround of the Ford family, starting with automotive pioneer Henry Ford, who was a vicious antisemite, and continuing with his grandson Henry Ford II, known as “Hank the Deuce,” who became a large supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes, and onto Bill Ford, Ford Motor Co’s current executive chairman. who traveled in 2019 to Tel Aviv to inaugurate a new Ford Research Center there.
For many Jews, the antisemitism of the founder of the Ford Motor Company — Henry Ford — will always give them pause. In 1918, he purchased a local newspaper in Michigan, The Dearborn Independent, and used it to publish a series denouncing Jews and accusing them of all kinds of conspiracies.
New York University Professor Hasia Diner was interviewed in 2021 by The American Experience program of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). She commented that Ford made a practice to “refer to Jews in every possible context as at the root of America’s and the world’s ills. Strikes: It was the Jews. Any kind of financial scandal? The Jews. Agricultural depression? The Jews. So ‘the Jew,’ in a way, became the symbol of a world that was being manipulated and controlled.”
Diner noted that Ford republished the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Czarist conspiracy forgery claiming “that a group of Jews got together and basically planned the fate of the world, be it financial catastrophe, be it war…. [The forgery] was printed in The Dearborn Independent as a factual piece. And so, someone reading it would take this to be the news.”
Ford spread his hatred through Ford dealerships, according to Diner. Stacks of The Dearborn Independent would be found at dealerships around the United States. “In some places, the dealership would actually put copies of the newspaper in the car, so that when you drove off with your Model T, there you had on the seat next to you a copy of The Dearborn Independent.” Other newspapers frequently quoted The Dearborn Independent, because it reflected the views of Ford.
Nazi Germany honored Ford in 1938 with its Grand Cross of the German Eagle. One reason was that production of the Volkswagen was greatly influenced by the mass production of the Model T Ford. In addition, German Dictator Adolf Hitler was “very aware of Henry Ford, of Henry Ford’s writings, and praised them,” Diner said. “He turned to the same document. There’s a common thread. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a cherished text for both. And there were certainly business connections between Ford Motors and the Nazi regime.”
Ford bound 91 weekly attacks into a four-volume set titled The International Jew, which he distributed through his dealerships and subscribers. A $1 million libel lawsuit prompted Ford to end publication of the scandalous newspaper series.
Zack Rothbart, a writer for The Jerusalem Post, noted in a 2019 article that Henry Ford shut down The Dearborn Independent after he was sued for libel.
The plaintiff was Aaron Sapiro, an attorney whom Ford had accused of exploiting farmers’ cooperatives. After meetings with the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, Ford also agreed to a cash settlement with Sapiro and to apologize to the Jewish community.
Ford’s grandson, Henry Ford II, whom we’ll call by his nickname, “Hank the Deuce” to avoid name confusion, took over the Ford Motor Company in 1945, two years before his grandfather’s death. He became an early supporter of the Jewish State, presenting to Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann a Ford Lincoln Cosmopolitan. He also gifted the United Jewish Appeal with $50,000 during its first-ever Christian Committee Campaign for Israel, according to Rothbart.
Other contributions followed, including a $100,000 check for an emergency fund created during the 1967 Six Day War. Within a short time after the war, Ford built an assembly plant in Nazareth, Israel, defying Arab calls for a worldwide boycott of Israel. “Nobody’s gonna tell me what to do,” the Jerusalem Post article quoted Hank the Deuce as saying.
“It was just pragmatic business procedure,” the grandson explained. “I don’t mind saying I was influenced in part by the fact that the company still suffers from a resentment against the antisemitism of the distant past. We want to overcome that. But the main thing is that here we had a dealer who wanted to open an agency to sell our products – hell, let him do that.”
“Made in Israel” Ford Escorts were produced in 1968, initially at the rate of three a day. By October 1971, the plant had produced 15,000. In 1972 Hank the Deuce visited Israel, meeting with then Prime Minister Golda Meir. Production at the Nazareth plant was expanded to include trucks and buses. In 1975, however, in a cost-cutting move, the Israeli plant, operated by Automotive Industries Ltd. (AIL), was closed.
In June 2019, while opening the Ford Research Center, Bill Ford said his company desired to become “the world’s most trusted company, designing smart vehicles for a smart world,” according to a Ford spokesperson.
Udy Danino, Israel Technical Director for the new Center, commented: “Expanding Ford’s presence in Israel with the new Research Center will allow us to engage with the best technology and leading companies a lot faster, and further Ford’s goals of bringing together our vehicle and technology expertise to create new solutions to meet the mobility challenges of today and tomorrow.”
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Next Sunday, April 10, 2022: Exit 11A (Harbor Drive): USS Gabrielle Giffords
This story is copyrighted (c) 2022 by Donald H. Harrison, editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. It is a serialization of his book Schlepping and Schmoozing Along Interstate 5, Volume 1, available on Amazon. Harrison may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com