The driver does not spare the whip. Despite the rutted roads, the patches of unfrozen mud, the eddies of snow swirling up and over the windshield, he keeps his foot on one of the additions to the New Ford Car—a gas pedal—and tips the odometer past sixty a few times, all the while babbling the Company spiel—‘standard gearshift, four-wheel brakes, hydraulic shock absorbers, automatic windshield wiper’ and a host of lesser innovations having to do with things Smitty does not understand and does not wish to. He hears Breen from the Times making little gasping noises
in the back seat, and is comforted to know somebody in the automobile is more terrified than he is.
“How’d you like it?” grins the young buck at the wheel when they careen back into the lot at the Engineering Laboratory.
“Son, you’ve made a Christian of me,” Smitty answers, then staggers to join the other inkslingers in their quest to grab a few quotables from the Woeful Prince and the aptly named Liebold. They’ve got Edsel surrounded, his back up against a spanking-new Tudor Sedan in what the Company handout says is ‘Niagara Blue.’
“Mr. Ford—over here!”
“Mr. Ford!”
“Give us a big smile—”
“Look in the lens, Mr. Ford—”
“They say she’ll do sixty miles an hour, Mr. Ford—”
“In reverse,” says the heir apparent, grinning, and the newsmen laugh.
“Rumor has it,” calls Smitty, “that your dad wanted to just keep making
the Model T.”
The Sage of Dearborn is allegedly ‘out of town’ for this important sneak peek, a hint, perhaps, that he really did oppose the redesign as long as was fiscally possible, occasionally applying wrathful bootheel and lug wrench to the bodies of early prototypes. Yes, the Founder held out for a planetary transmission, whatever that is, and resented being forced to modify the brakes due to new government regulations, but Smitty figures he’s just a stubborn old cuss used to being right about everything.
Copyright © 2026 by John Sayles. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
