Detroit Automobile Company

In eighteen ninety-nine, Ford resigned from his stable job at the Edison Illuminating Company.

Together with a group of investors, he founded his first company, the Detroit Automobile Company.

This should have been his big break.

Instead, the company struggled to move his-- from prototypes to reliable, sellable vehicles, and within about eighteen months, it collapsed into bankruptcy.

The quadricycle was so promising that Thomas Edison himself encouraged Ford to pursue his dream of building an affordable automobile.

So in 1899, backed by a group of local investors, Ford co-founded the Detroit Automobile Company.

And you'll never guess what happened next.

The company tanked.

and the men who owned it, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen, had now lost money on Henry Ford twice.

The first time was the Detroit Automobile Company, which folded early in 1901 after about 20 cars were built.

They were slow, expensive, and not very good.

When in October of that year, Ford beat Alexander Winton, the biggest name in American racing, in a 10-mile race at Grosse Pointe.