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"The old bloke advertised," he said, "for another driver, a steady, reliable man to drive a twenty horse-power, four-cylinder touring car. Every driver in Sydney put in for it. Nothing like a fast car to fetch 'em, you know. And Scotty got it. Him wot used to drive the Napier I was tellin' you about." "And what did the old man say when he found he'd been running a racing car?" "He don't know now.
The year from 1902 until the formation of the Ford Motor Company was practically one of investigation. In my little one-room brick shop I worked on the development of a four-cylinder motor and on the outside I tried to find out what business really was and whether it needed to be quite so selfish a scramble for money as it seemed to be from my first short experience.
During this time of reflection I was far from idle. We were going ahead with a four-cylinder motor and the building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time, for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.
You want a tin cage," the consul repeated soothingly. "The State Department doesn't keep me awake nights cabling me what it's going to do," he said, "but at least I know it doesn't send a thousand-dollar-a-minute, four-cylinder lawyer all the way to this fever swamp to buy a tin cage. Now, honest, how can I serve you?" I saw it was hopeless. No one would believe the truth.
There's lots of cheap cars made like that. "So Henery he says that this is a twenty mongrel only a four-cylinder engine; and nobody drops to what she is till Henery goes out one Sunday and waits for the big Napier that Scotty used to drive it belonged to the same bloke wot owned that big racehorse wot won all the races.
That was my first race, and it brought advertising of the only kind that people cared to read. The public thought nothing of a car unless it made speed unless it beat other racing cars. My ambition to build the fastest car in the world led me to plan a four-cylinder motor. But of that more later.
It was a prosperous business. During the season 1908-1909 we continued to make Models "R" and "S," four-cylinder runabouts and roadsters, the models that had previously been so successful, and which sold at $700 and $750. But "Model T" swept them right out. We sold 10,607 cars a larger number than any manufacturer had ever sold. The price for the touring car was $850.
On January 25th the Brussels Exhibition opened, when the Antoinette monoplane, the Gaffaux and Hanriot monoplanes, together with the d'Hespel aeroplane, were shown; there were also the dirigible Belgica and a number of interesting aero engines, including a German airship engine and a four-cylinder 50 horse-power Miesse, this last air-cooled by means of 22 fans driving a current of air through air jackets surrounding fluted cylinders.
Both these boys had picked up quickly and efficiently, without the slightest previous experience, the running and the care of the four-cylinder gasoline engine of the mission launch, and took a great and intelligent interest in all machinery.
But it would be physically impossible for the car a 15 h.p. four-cylinder Northumberland, an average medium-power car to get to Southampton by half-past six unless it left Marlstone by midnight at latest.
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