The gloomy day this past October was dampening the centennial celebration of Henry Ford's racing business. But Edsel B. Ford II, his great-grandson, was having a ball.
He skittered around in a replica of the Sweepstakes, the two-cylinder 1901 car in which Henry Ford won a 10-lap race that helped to persuade investors to finance the Ford Motor Co. For the great-grandson, the replica car recreated a defining moment in his family's history, in which he takes an avid interest.
"I had a smile on my face from the time I got in to the time I got out," Edsel Ford recalled.
Now, there are signs that Edsel Ford, 52, is taking a more active role at the company, which he quit in 1998 after a middling 25-year career that took him through a series of marketing jobs to his final eight years as president of Ford Motor Credit, the financing arm. By then, it seemed clear that he would receive no further promotions, at a time when his younger cousin was on a career path toward the top of the company.
On Oct. 30, that cousin, William Clay Ford, 44, replaced Jacques Nasser as Ford's Motor's chief executive in a shake-up over the company's quality problems and losses. Last week, the new chief said he was eager for his older cousin to play a greater role beyond his board seat, which he retained when he resigned. "I'm going to ask him to do more for us," William Ford said.
Not waiting for Edsel Ford to volunteer, the company's new chief operating officer, Nicholas Scheele, said he had invited him to visit a dozen cities next year to help management improve strained relations with dealers, employees and customers.
Laughing, Edsel Ford said Scheele's request was "not on my calendar yet." But, he said, "I will do whatever Bill wants me to do; it's up to them to decide how visible they want me to be."
Even as Ford Motor's new management is tugging at him, it is clear that Edsel Ford has another, though lesser-known, business interest in common with his great-grandfather.
In November, for an undisclosed price, he bought DaimlerChrysler Aviation, which provides leased private jets and pilots to corporate customers. It had been put up for sale as part of Chrysler's effort to trim costs.
Edsel Ford, who said he saw corporate aviation as a huge business opportunity, has installed a new president and is spending at least one day a week at the company, though he is not planning to interfere with the staff. "I'm leaving this to the professionals," he said.
He did, however, change the company's name back to Pentastar, as it was known before the merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler in 1998. (The name comes from Chrysler's five-pointed symbol.)
Edsel Ford's aviation interest was puzzling to those who have known him primarily as the son of the late Henry Ford II, until now the last Ford family member to serve as the automaker's chief executive. His grandfather was Edsel Ford, a president of the company after whom the ill-fated Edsel car was named; he died in 1943.
But Edsel Ford II, discussing the aviation deal for the first time, said, "I'm a flying guy and I've always wanted to be involved in it."
Although he is not a pilot, he enjoys sitting in the cockpit. John Ratcliff, Ford's Motor's chief corporate pilot, said, "He's a very dramatic aviation enthusiast."
So, too, was Edsel Ford II's great-grandfather, whose plants built thousands of Ford Trimotors, the tinny propeller planes used to start transcontinental airmail service and used as an early passenger aircraft. During World War II, Ford Motor converted its vast Willow Run factory outside Ypsilanti, Michigan, to make aircraft engines and B-24 Liberator bombers. "It's fitting that he has moved into the aviation industry," said Warren Benjamin Kidder, a historian and the author of the 1995 book, Willow Run: Colossus of Aviation History.
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