Henry's esteem

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-743 ev in hot phx (love those email sigs!) quotes Robert Cumberford
writing in the June issue of 'Automobile' magazine, including a quote from
Henry Ford: "Whenever I see an Alfa Romeo, I take off my hat"

It is correct that Cumberford did include that Ford "quotation", which is
widely repeated in many places including in a slightly longer version ("Every
time I see an Alfa Romeo pass by, I raise my hat") as the opening line in
Griffith Borgeson's book "The Alfa Romeo Tradition".

Borgeson is in my opinion certainly the best American automotive historian to
have written about Alfa Romeo, and that book is probably the most important
one about the company (as distinct from the cars) in the English language.
However, it is also patched together from a series of separate articles which
he wrote over a period of years for "Automobile Quarterly" about the several
individuals - Merosi, Romeo, Ferrari, Jano, Colombo, Satta, and many others -
who shaped the company and its products over the years. The origins of the
Henry Ford quote come up in the beginning of a chapter on Ugo Gobatto, who ran
the company from 1933 to 1945, when he was assassinated by the partisans for
what they believed his role had been in the war.

Borgeson had tried, as any curious historian would, to find the source of the
quote; he knew that there were hardly any Alfas in the USA during Ford's
lifetime. Nobody at Alfa had any idea of the source, and the Ford archives
called it unverifiable, implausible and apocryphal. Then, in the course of a
long interview with Ugo Gobatto's son Dr. Ing. Pierugo Gobatto, Dr. Gobatto
told of his father's visit with Henry Ford in 1939. I won't enter long quotes
here, if interested go read the book p.94-96, but Gobatto said "Mr. Ford has
been misquoted. He didn't say 'every time I see one.' He said 'When I see
one'", and that during the previous year Ford had examined an 8C 2900 roadster
that had been brought by a member of the Rockefeller family.

That car, probably the only Alfa Ford would have been likely to have seen, was
probably the McClure Halley car, which was no ordinary 8C 2900. Halley was a
fastidious and persistent man who knew what he wanted, could afford to get it,
and made three trips across the Atlantic to oversee the body construction (by
Touring) and detailing to his tastes during the year it took to build the car.
Halley had the instruments "jeweled" in Belgium, and also had the leather
upholstery done in Belgium, despite the generally high reputation of the best
Italian leatherwork; the top was black silk, the firewall was engine-turned
polished aluminum, each of the dozens of louvers on the hood had an individual
cast aluminum cover, and all of the exterior trim, including the windshield
posts, were covered with a very faint and subtle diamond-etched decorative
pattern. All of the aluminum parts of the engine were highly polished, and the
rest plated, as were all of the parts of the suspension, brake drums, and
wheels. At the Milan motor show the car was shown on both the Touring and Alfa
stands with the New York license plate already on it and Halley's monogram on
the doors. All in all, a very spectacular car. (Well maintained, too; it
covered about 15,000 miles in fifteen years, and was meticulously cleaned
after every time it was driven.)

There is no way to prove that Henry Ford had never seen another Alfa, but it
is unlikely that he did; they were far less common here than Isotta-Fraschinis
or Hispano-Suizas. There is no solid evidence one way or another, only a
little hearsay from the son of the man Ford was speaking to, and the opinions
of Borgeson, but it is doubtful that the opinion attributed to Ford has much
of a connection to the cars we are familiar with. Nice stories, just the
same.

For Halley's car, see p.70-75 in Simon Moore's "The Immortal 2.9". And if you
know of another Alfa Romeo Henry Ford might have seen, please tell me about
it.

John

Raleigh N.C.
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