Ford’s Auto Domination Came From a 1909 Race Across America Through Mud-Choked Roads

In June 1909, five automobiles lined up in front of New York's City Hall to attempt something no car had ever done: drive all the way to Seattle. The Ocean-to-Ocean Race was supposed to be a publicity stunt for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but it became something far more consequential, a 4,100-mile brawl through gumbo mud, quicksand, flooded rivers, and snow-choked mountain passes that would help launch the Model T, expose the wretched state of America's roads, and change the trajectory of the automobile industry forever. Henry Ford entered two stripped-down Model Ts priced at $850 against rivals costing five to ten times as much, betting his company's future on the proposition that a lightweight, affordable car could outrun and outlast them all.

Today’s guest is Eric Moskowitz, author of The Hardest, Longest Race. We see the real story is far messier than Ford's victory narrative. The Shawmut Motor Company, a tiny Boston outfit that had lost everything in a factory fire and entered the race as a last-ditch gamble to survive, battled the Fords neck and neck across twelve states, only to be sabotaged by bribed ferrymen, blocked by armed guards at river crossings, and ultimately cheated by an illegal engine swap that Ford concealed until a small-town fraud investigator from Idaho uncovered the shipping receipts. The Automobile Club of America stripped Ford of the win and awarded the trophy to the Shawmut, but by then nobody was listening, Ford's dealers had already papered the country with victory ads, and the Shawmut Motor Company was dead. We see that the century of the automobile had the most unlikely origin story.

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