Radical Restoration

- Our 1865 - Roper is a steam car.

This vehicle here is what made the Ford Motor Company as we know it.

It's called the 9 9 9.

This is the 2011 Daytona winner.

Trevor Bain was the youngest person to win this race at 19 years old.

The two vehicles you'll see behind me is our 1931 Bugatti and our 1931 Deusenberg Model J.

Every car has a story - Car tell you the best thing ever.

For some they end up here.

These are just some of the stories about those who collectively restore vehicle, giving them a renewed lease on life so that their stories can be told right here on radical restoration.

- Closed captioning is provided by Senior Discovery Tours [email protected].

Funding for radical restoration is provided by - Rakabot sources sustainable materials to create boot racks that organize footwear while allowing drippings to go in the bowl.

Models designed for home work or recreational settings are available [email protected].

Birds underwater in Crystal River, - Florida supports radical restoration, offering guided excursions with Florida manatees, kayak rentals, scuba diving certifications and boat tours are also available since 1993 and [email protected].

In this episode, we take a guided tour of the Henry Ford Museum - In Dearborn, Michigan.

- Welcome to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.

This museum celebrates everyday men and women doing extraordinary things.

This year is our cornerstone.

You'll see the name carved in by the man himself, Thomas Edison.

This was carved in 1928, a year before the museum opened.

In 1929, A shovel put in place belongs to Ruth Luther Burbank, an agricultural scientist creating thousands of different types of fruits and vegetables.

Most famously the Idaho potato, Henry Ford grew up on a farm he didn't like the work, very much, long hours, tedious work he loved and celebrated the small technologies that were being introduced that made his life easier.

So this cornerstone celebrates not only Thomas Edison, but starting with agriculture.

No matter where you are in the world, we all start with a shovel in the dirt and through men and women like Thomas Edison.

Here's everything you can accomplish.

This museum celebrates several different exhibits, including agriculture with liberty and justice for which has the actual bus Rosa Parks was arrested in and the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in and Ford's theater on that fateful day.

Directly behind me, you'll see our large DC three and our heroes of the sky section.

And then over to our left we have railroads and automotive, including Driven to Win, which is our racing exhibit and driving America, which celebrates the evolution of cars in the United States.

We're gonna start here on our timeline and the first thing you'll notice is we don't have a lot of the same vehicle.

What we do have is one or two vehicles to explain the story of how automotive history worked throughout the United States.

The first three vehicles we really like to concentrate on are these three here.

Starting off our timeline, we have our 1865 Roper.

We have our 1896 Ford Quarter Cycle and our 1901 Columbia Victorian.

Now these cars are very historical and more importantly set the tone for what Americans would be driving.

Our 1865 Roper is a steam car.

It is the oldest surviving American automobile.

Although steam was used often in the beginning of the turn of the century, it really didn't take off, so to speak.

It took a long time to get started and it was more even this vehicle here was really more of a carnival, a state fair type deal.

Now this is one of the most important parts of our entire collection, not just automotive.

This is our 1896 Ford Quadr Cycle.

This is the actual car Henry Forest first built.

This was his first vehicle.

This is a gasoline run machine.

Ford actually went up to Thomas Edison and he showed his idea for the Quadr cycle and his idea to make an affordable vehicle and Thomas Edison, that's the thing.

Now the big question is did he say it to everyone else in line to meet Thomas Edison?

However, this starts not only Henry Ford's fascination with vehicles, but with Thomas Edison.

The legal name of this institute is the Edison Institute.

The Henry Ford is our commercial name.

To honor Henry's vision for what this museum he wanted to be, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford became very close friends and you will see that throughout our collection.

Henry Ford put a lot of this collection in place to honor Thomas Edison.

Henry Ford in 1901 starts his first car company called the Detroit Automobile Company, and it goes under, he starts his second, the Henry Ford Company and that too, he has issues with investors, which we'll talk about later, and that goes under.

Finally, Henry Ford starts the Ford Motor Company two years later, and in 1908, he introduces this vehicle, the Model T. Now the first Model T comes out in 1908, and you'll notice the old story was you can get a Model T in any color as long as the color black.

However, this is red.

In 1908, Henry Ford actually offered six different colors for the Model T. It wasn't until 1913 when Mass assembly started that it went to only black.

The first model T's for the first couple years were around just north of $800.

It varied depending on what dealership you bought or maybe when you bought the car.

It wasn't until after 1914 when Mass Assembly starts rolling that the price would eventually drop to just north of $200.

It drops in a fourth of price.

This is huge, not only for Henry Ford, but for the Detroit area.

People from all over the country and some in Canada start coming to Detroit and they want to work for a new priority.

Henrys Ford's putting in $5 a day and an eight hour work week.

The mass assembly line was hard work, and quite frankly, it was tedious, it was boring, but Henry Ford couldn't make the work easier.

What he could do was incentivize the worker.

Now with $5 a day and a vehicle that only cost just north of $200, who do you think his first customers are?

It is the workers.

He is creating what we know now really as the middle class, and he is greatly accredited for it.

So after the Model T, you'll see a big spike in technology.

You'll start to see hard roofs come on, vehicles, glass windows, all of these different levels of change.

This would develop into luxury cars, regular cars, all these different features and options.

And until finally World War ii, Detroit has a new goal and that goal is to help the war effort.

So Detroit at and all big three major companies, gm, Ford, and Chrysler, stop making regular everyday vehicles and start making machines for war in 1949.

After the wars are over, Henry Ford introduces a new vehicle.

Well, this would be a Henry Ford ii, the 1949 Ford.

You'll notice the fenders are gone.

It has this weird thing called power steering and AC all these new features.

This is the car, the feature and imports start coming in as well.

We have the Volkswagen of the same year, the car, the people, which would soon become the top selling vehicle of all time beating out the Model T. We walk through here and we see things such as the Corver, we see the bell air, all these Chevys start to pop up with cool different styling and I want to point out two major vehicles during a very specific time and change the Dodge Omni and the Chrysler Newport.

These cars are only a couple years apart.

We have a 17 foot car followed by a Japanese hatchback.

And what happened there?

That would be the oil embargo.

Chrysler was struggling, their cars were 17 feet long.

What are they going to do?

Will they take inspiration from the Japanese and they create an L-shaped frame?

You'll see the L in the back as opposed to a standard T shape.

This saves on storage and mileage.

Chrysler was very much up against it and this little Dodge Omni that all the kids walked past by don't think too much about, helps save one of the major companies in Detroit.

It was actually named Auto Auto Week's Car of the Year.

We have a Honda Accord.

This is the first vehicle made in the United States.

This is the first foreign made vehicle made here in the United States on our land.

It's the Prius with the hybrid technology definitely changed the game and how alternative fuels going all the way back to the beginning of our timeline.

So this is the original model A and for any car enthusiasts you might say, that looks nothing like the Model A that my grandpa drove around and you are correct.

The model A we know is today we'll get to in a little bit, looked very different than Ford's first car.

The 1903 model A was Henry the Ford Motor Company's first production vehicle.

It was very simple, eight horsepower.

You'll even see a bike chain under it.

This was rudimentary.

This is Henry Ford's process in trying to get to that affordable car, but you need capital to do it.

So Henry Ford did dabble in luxury vehicles.

This is a 1905.

Model B was Henry Ford's real trial in luxury.

He needed that kind of money, this equivalate to probably $66,000 roughly in modern currency.

There are only I could probably count on, we don't have the exact number, but somewhere in single digits of how many vehicles are left of the Model B class.

Henry Ford would continue with his alphabet cars all the way we hit the model T. You'll see this is the 1914.

This is what your mass production looks like.

A little less gold, a little less trim, a little more basic, anything to keep it efficient, but keep the costs down.

Now, Henry Ford started to fall behind a little bit.

He got a little too attached to his model T while his son Etzel was working on a new design for yes, the revamped Model A.

This might be the model A your viewers might be a little more familiar with.

This is Model A comes out in 1927, the first car to roll out of the Rouge factory.

Henry Ford's new factory leaving Highland Park where the Model T's were being produced.

This vehicle while is a very good vehicle, only has about two or three year run.

It was a very short life because Henry Ford introduces his new single block VA engine.

This engine over here is casted with one piece of metal.

That means we can mass produce speed and keep it at an affordable cost.

This 1932 was quick, it was efficient, it was fun.

But what's the problem?

It's 1932 and we are in the heap of the Great Depression.

So Ford does something very bold.

He releases a letter, which we have a copy of here in our archives, and it is a letter from Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde thanking Henry Ford for such a beautiful car and how much he loved one anytime he could get away with it.

Well, Ford takes a little bit of a risk here and publishes that letter and the kids love it.

If Bonnie and Clyde, if John Dillinger are riding this vehicle, we want one too.

And that helps Ford Motor Company, that advertisement get through the Great Depression.

This is our new Driven to Win exhibit.

This is one of our newest permanent exhibits here at the Henry Ford.

What makes this exhibit unique compared to other racing exhibits is we not only cover some racing, we cover every style of American racing.

And that starts again with our founder Henry Ford.

This is a 1901 sweepstakes.

Now Henry Ford has already failed his first company and he needs to start another company.

And what you would do back then is you'd build a car, bring it to the track, and investors would watch the races.

Whoever wins can most likely build the best car, and that's what Henry Ford was determined to do.

He takes on Alexander Winton, a driver who was undefeated on the American circuit.

This was a David and Goliath situation, and on the last lap, Alexander went and breaks down and Henry Ford takes the win.

Henry Ford could have probably lived off that win for quite a while.

It was a very big event and he became somewhat of a name in racing.

So Henry Ford gets the funding to start the Henry Ford Company with a man named Harry Henry Leland.

Now Henry Ford wants to start making that affordable vehicle, but he also has found he caught the racing bug a little bit.

It's a good way to advertise and it's a good way to test engineering, but him and investors didn't get along between the racing and having Henry build luxury vehicles.

So Henry Ford investors couldn't make it work and Henry Ford left the Henry Ford Motor Company.

That company went on to exist as Cadillac.

This vehicle here is what made the Ford Motor Company as we know it.

It's called the 9 9 9.

If you ever saw an old cartoon where the driver had a goggles on and a cigar sticking out of his mouth, that was based on Barney Oldfield.

This is our showmanship section.

Racing was to sell win on Sunday, sell on Monday, the 9 9 9 here was the first car to race five miles in five minutes.

It's sister car, which has been lost to time.

The arrow was the first to break the land speed record.

This is our 1967 Mark IV gt.

This 1967 model was an all American win.

Ford returns to Lama after their famous 1, 2, 3 victory and they bring it with two American drivers and a card completely designed in the United States.

Ford knew they couldn't beat Ferrari on just speed alone, so they had proper interchangeable parts.

Everything in this vehicle, you could find that almost any auto shop in the United States at the time.

A fun fact about this car is Dan Gurney was famously tall for the race cars and his iconic gurney bump would be seen in many of his vehicles throughout his historic racing career.

One of our most legendary vehicles is over here.

You'll hear the name Dan Gurney again throughout this exhibit, the All-American racer.

He raced IndyCar, he raced nascar.

He raced Formula One, he raced it all.

The renaissance man of racing, he was called and he teamed up with Ford Lotus and a man named Jim Clark.

If any Formula One fans are watching, you will know that legendary name, often referred to as the Babe Ruth of Formula one.

He came over to win the Indie 500, one of the crown jewels of auto sport across the world.

What makes this vehicle unique is the engine placement.

This was the first Indy car to win the 500 with a rear engine in it.

From there then on every race car that won the race had a rear engine.

And these are the types of innovations we talk about.

This is the 2011 Daytona winner.

Trevor Bain was the youngest person to win this race at 19 years old.

However, there was a problem when they wanted to celebrate with champagne, he wasn't legally allowed to.

So NASCAR had him celebrate with cola and you'll see that all over this vehicle.

Why?

It's a little stickier.

The rule usually is with racing, if the car's a winner, you don't clean it.

You leave all the scars, the scrapes, the bruises, the confetti there on the vehicle.

The vehicle you'll see behind you is our Camaro.

This is another loan from General Motors.

This is a 2018, and this was very important because it broke its class record at the Berg Ring.

The Berg Ring is an infamous track over in Europe where Mercedes, BMW, they all try their hand at who tamed this track.

While American muscle cars are supposed to go fast and they're supposed to go straight, they're not supposed to make those tight turns, but this vehicle did it.

This is the announcement to the world that the American muscle car isn't what you remember.

It is a sports car.

It can run with anybody, and that's what GM went set to set out and prove, and they did it.

So this vehicle here isn't just any Mustang.

This is Mustang Serial number one.

The first off the assembly line, you'll see it's right next to this Ford Taurus.

And this is an example of what Ford wanted when the Mustang came out.

It wasn't just going to be a sports car, it was gonna be your weekend driver, much like that model T all those years ago.

If Ford can't make it for everybody, they don't wanna make it at all.

This vehicle also has a great story behind it.

This being serial number one was not supposed to be sold.

You don't wanna sell serial number one, especially when they kn already knew how big Mustang was gonna be.

However, up in Canada it was put in a showroom.

You can guess what happened.

It was sold.

So Ford went back to get it and they went to the airline pilot who had bought it and they said, we need this car back.

And for an exchange of a new car of a significant number, he gives the car back under one condition.

Don't take my license plate off this vehicle and you will see his original license plate on the front of the vehicle, which we have honored after Ford donated it to the museum.

The two vehicles you'll see behind me is our 1931 Bugatti and our 1931 Dusenberg Model J.

This is a luxury section of our museum.

This Bugatti is one we should really focus on because this is one of the rarest cars in our collection.

Only six of these vehicles were made, and this is the only coop in 1931.

This car would've cost $43,000 and that is not adjusted for inflation.

This is one of the rarest, most prestigious vehicles that was on the road at the time.

Our Tucker, which was a company founded in Ypsilanti, Michigan, just about 30 minutes down the road here from Dearborn.

This vehicle was 1948 and put a lot of new features such as the rear tail light very.

As we entered the space age, Tucker was very influenced by that newer comic book style look, and you'll see that in the details of the Tucker.

However, the Tucker had a very short run and after its quick demise, the cars became much more collectible, the sel.

This was for one of Ford's greatest commercial failures.

However, after the commercial failure of the sel, this car too, because of its rarity and its unique character, became a very hot collector's item.

These vehicles that were one-time failures are now viewed as these rare gems.

This is our collection of presidential vehicles.

All the vehicles you will see are original, starting with our 1902 Teddy Roosevelt carriage.

Now, Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to ride in a vehicle.

It was actually a Columbia, much like the one we have on display here at the museum.

However, Teddy Roosevelt didn't feel it was very presidential to ride in cars.

They were very early on and they were kind of more toys for the rich at that point.

So he didn't feel it was very esteemed to be riding in one of these new contraptions.

Much like that.

His cousin was the first president to have a vehicle designed specifically for the president of the United States.

At this point, the president was riding in a vehicle, however, it would've been your standard Lincoln, your standard Cadillac, your standard luxury car.

How embarrassing when someone pulls up next to you in the exact same vehicle as you.

So he sent five pages to Ford with specific details he wanted in his vehicle.

Now, there is a theory that if you notice the suicide style opening doors and the long running panel, he famously had mobility issues.

So what he wanted to do was create a vehicle that he could get in and out of without leading the public to realize it.

So secret service would appear to be helping him in when really they're most likely picking him up and setting him in the vehicle.

This was a very big step in the history of presidential transportation.

As going forward, presidents would want certain details added to their vehicles depending on what they wanted.

You'll see this very openly, but this more of a style is choice.

With Eisenhower's bubble top, you'll see the chrome finish that was so popular in the 1950s.

You'll see the bubble top sleek design and you'll see a shield.

That shield protected the president from wind and bugs in his face.

This was not an added security standard.

It was a very big and debated topic at the time.

Does the president want to be seen or does the president want to be hidden?

Secret service wants him hidden.

The president wants to be seen by the public.

It wasn't until 1963 on that fateful day in Dallas, Texas, in this vehicle where John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

This is the actual vehicle.

However, you might notice a little bit of difference in looks.

This vehicle obviously is a hard top and it is black.

This, this vehicle is actually used up till President Carter after the assassination.

President Carter would be the last to use it.

However, Lyndon Johnson was next up in line.

They had a choice either build a new fleet or rebuild the ones they had due to timing and budgeting.

They chose to rebuild the ones they had.

They called it Operation Quick Fix.

That included the infamous Kennedy car.

So armor was added, permanent roof, bulletproof glass, bulletproof tires.

All of these features were added on.

And if you're a car buff, you might notice the grill is off A later model, because the original grill didn't fit.

After the armor was added, this would become the standard of presidential vehicles.

The vehicle behind you can see was built with all of these things in mind.

This was Ronald Reagan's.

It was out of this vehicle.

He was exiting when John Hinkley shot at him.

The bullet would bounce off this back panel and into him.

However, if they get him in this vehicle and this vehicle saves his life, this will probably be one of the more recent presidential limousines you will see in the country.

The new ones are used for testing or dismantled because they don't want people to know necessarily how they are made.

- Closed captioning is provided by senior discovery tours [email protected].

Funding for radical restoration is provided by - Rakabot sources sustainable materials to create boot racks that organize footwear while allowing drippings to go in the bowl.

Models designed for home work or recreational settings are available [email protected].

Birds underwater in Crystal River, Florida - Supports radical restoration, offering guided excursions with Florida manatees, kayak rentals, scuba diving certifications, and boat tours are also available since 1993 and [email protected].

- Thank you for joining us.

My name's Gary Nichols.

Until next time, may all your rides be radical.