Today, with car companies selling or shuttering divisions as fast as state franchise laws will permit, it's become fashionable to criticize the auto industry -- particularly General Motors -- for its surfeit of brands. For decades, however, GM's divisional structure was the envy of Detroit. Almost every automaker aspired to a GM-like brand hierarchy, from Chrysler to upstart independents like Kaiser-Frazer.

Until the late thirties, a major exception was the Ford Motor Company. Although Ford had acquired bankrupt Lincoln back in 1922, Henry Ford had never cared for expensive cars, and he steadfastly refused to create a mid-priced line. In the early years of the Great Depression, that wasn't much of a loss, but as the economy began to show signs of life, the vast price gap between Ford and Lincoln cost the company many buyers.

In the summer of 1937, Edsel Ford and sales boss John R. Davis finally persuaded Henry to authorize the development of a new mid-priced car. It emerged the following fall as the 1939 Mercury. Although the Mercury shared many components with the standard Ford, including a bored-out version of the familiar flathead V8, it was bigger, heavier, and more expensive, putting it in the same territory as mid-priced makes like Oldsmobile, Hudson, and DeSoto.

The Mercury sold reasonably well, but it was not a great threat to GM's mid-priced divisions. Its main failing was that most buyers perceived it as a Ford, not a separate brand. Indeed, even Edsel Ford had wanted to call it the Ford-Mercury, and all of the early promotional material carried that name. Most Mercurys were even sold through Ford dealers; there were a few dealers who only sold Lincolns and Mercurys, but they were rare before the war. The consequence was that each of Mercury's direct rivals outsold it by more than two to one.

By the fall of 1945, Edsel Ford was dead and Henry Ford had reluctantly ceded control of the company to Edsel's eldest son, Henry Ford II. Henry II, then only 27, realized immediately that the company's problems were beyond his ability, and sought outside help.

Shortly after Henry's ascendancy, he hired a group of young officers recently released from the United States Army Air Force, including Charles "Tex" Thornton, Ben Mills, Francis (Jack) Reith, and Robert McNamara. All had worked together in the USAAF's Office of Statistical Controls, applying the latest techniques in business analysis to the war effort. When the war ended, Tex Thornton sent an impudent telegram to Henry Ford II, offering the group's expertise to Ford.

The Whiz Kids, as Thornton's group became known, were smart, ambitious, and ruthless. While they each aspired to top positions within Ford (which many of them later achieved), they had little interest in cars or the auto business for their own sake. To many of the Whiz Kids, cars -- and Ford itself -- were simply a means to an end.

Clever as the Whiz Kids were, they were not much older than Henry Ford II, so Henry decided he needed more experienced managerial help. In the summer of 1946, he hired Ernest R. Breech, former president of GM's Bendix subsidiary, as his executive vice president. Breech, in turn, recruited a host of other GM veterans, including Harold Youngren, Earle MacPherson, and Lewis Crusoe, who became Ford's VP of operations and later the general manager of the Ford Division. Unlike the Whiz Kids, whose main agenda was power, Breech's group sought to make over Ford in GM's image. Their ultimate goal was to do everything GM had done, only better -- from management style to divisional structure.

Inevitably, there was great tension between the Whiz Kids and Breech's group. Despite their youth, the Whiz Kids had just spent three years telling generals what to do, and they had an unshakable confidence in their own talents. They sometimes made a great show of deference to Breech and other older executives, but privately, they often regarded them as obstacles and adversaries.

Henry Ford II watched these conflicts unfold, never permanently siding with any one group. His only goal was to restore his grandfather's company to its former position as the world's number-one automaker, and he was willing to follow whatever path seemed likely to get him there. To some extent, he may have been intimidated by the brilliant and driven men working for him, but at the end of the day, it was Ford's name on the door.


The 1946-1948 Fords, Mercurys, and Lincolns were warmed-over prewar designs; this is a 1948 Mercury station wagon. The 1949 models were introduced quite early in 1948 -- the new Mercurys bowed on April 29, almost six months earlier than usual.

Once Henry Ford I was gone, no one at Ford had any compunctions about expanding the company's product line. Early plans called for an extensive new lineup: a bigger standard Ford, a new compact "Light Car," two different Mercurys, and three Lincolns, the largest of which would replace the Continental as the company's flagship. With Ford's finances still shaky, however, those plans proved overly ambitious. The Light Car was sent overseas to become the 1949 French Ford Vedette, while the bigger Lincolns were canceled. Ford launched a crash program to design a new standard Ford, while the bigger Ford became a Mercury and the larger Mercury became the base-model Lincoln.

When the all-new 1949 models finally appeared, the lineup was as follows:

• The Ford, on a 114-inch (2,896 mm) wheelbase, priced in the $1,300-$1,900 bracket
• The Mercury, on a 118-inch (2,997 mm) wheelbase, priced in the $2,000-$2,500 bracket
• The standard Lincoln, on a 121-inch (3,073 mm) wheelbase, priced in the $2,500-$3,200 bracket
• The Lincoln Cosmopolitan, on a 125-inch (3,175 mm) wheelbase, with prices ranging from just under $3,200 to about $4,000.

In theory, the new model range gave Ford an entry in each major segment of the American market. The Ford competed with Chevrolet and Plymouth; the Mercury with Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Dodge; the standard Lincoln with Buick and Chrysler; the Lincoln Cosmopolitan with Cadillac and Packard. In practice, there were still large price gaps between the different model lines. The biggest was between Mercury and Lincoln, where there was a spread of more than $500, a lot of money at the time. As a result, Ford was still losing a lot of middle-class customers. Marketing studies revealed that only one in four Ford buyers moved on to a Mercury or Lincoln, compared to the five out of six Chevrolet buyers who eventually stepped up to another GM marque. Ford needed something to fill the gap.


The 1949-1951 Mercury was originally designed by Bob Gregorie as the 1949 Ford, but Ernie Breech thought it would be too big and cost too much to build for the low-priced field, so it became a Mercury instead. Powered by a 255 cu. in. (4.2 L) version of the Ford flathead V8, it was rated at 112 hp (84 kW) in 1951. The 1949-1951 Merc was very popular with hot rodders and customizers, although its straight-line performance was no match for that of the new Oldsmobile Rocket Eighty-Eight. (Photo © 2007 Späth Chr.; released to the public domain by the photographer)

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