Henry Ford was born 150 years ago this week (30 July 1863). He didn't invent the automobile; he didn't invent mass production or the assembly line; but by harnessing these together he put country behind the steering wheel of an affordable motor vehicle that helped revolutionise society and manufacturing. Famous for saying the customer could have their Model T vehicle in any colour they wanted, just as long as it was black and his hopes for world peace through mass consumerism, he was nearly as infamous for his notorious anti-union strikebreaking at Ford assembly plants and his virulent anti-Semitism. J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look backward over Ford's world.

This writer grew up in a working class suburb in New Jersey in a neighbourhood primarily populated by Jewish and Italian Americans. Many of these people were members of unions active in the factories nearby. While virtually every family was happily purchasing its family car and all the other consumer goods of the 1950s, very few if any of these people would have considered a Ford product as their automobile of choice - even if they admired the luxury of a Lincoln or the spaciousness and mechanical sophistication of a Ford...