Henry Ford put the "Motor" in "Motor City" while working as an engineer for the Detroit-based Edison Illuminating Company. Per History, he constructed a "gasoline-powered horseless carriage" dubbed the Quadricycle, which he kept in a horseless stable known as a shed. In 1903, he founded Ford Motor Company and in 1908, he rolled out the first Model T, or "Tin Lizzie." The beauty of the Model T was that it was ugly and cheap. Per The Daily Beast, investors wanted the company to crank out cars most people couldn't afford. But Ford believed he would earn more money selling cheap cars to the masses. His gamble paid off handsomely, and by the time Ford quit cranking out Model T's, he had sold 15 million of them. In 1913, Ford changed the face of carmaking with his assembly line, which later enabled his company to pump out one car every 24 seconds.
Cars and good times rolled for Ford, who turned his company into the largest auto manufacturer on the planet. He also took some abominably wrong turns, like when he published articles under the headline, The International Jew: The World's Problem, and later voiced support for Hitler. Ford was also notoriously anti-union. Perhaps the ugliest expression of that disdain happened in the 1937 Battle of the Overpass. As Smithsonian details, the United Autoworkers Union organized a protest targeting Ford Motor Company's River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan.
Demonstrators congregated on the Miller Road Overpass, but Ford wielded "a private police force composed of ex-convicts, ex-athletes, ex-cops and gang members." When the unionists refused to disperse, Ford's hired muscle started busting heads. UAW leader Walter Reuther got "kicked, stomped, lifted into the air, thrown to the ground repeatedly, and tossed down two flights of stairs." Another union leader got thrown over the overpass, landing on the unforgiving pavement 30 feet below.
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