Henry Ford’s fascination with airplanes inspired many toys worldwide

Henry Ford is best known as the founder of the first manufacturing firm to mass-produce automobiles at affordable prices, but few realize today that he held a long and largely unknown fondness and fascination with aviation.

Before he founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, Henry Ford was employed by the Edison Illuminating Company. During this period he was encouraged by Thomas Edison to develop a self-propelled vehicle. He later started several firms, the short-lived Detroit Automobile Company, and the Henry Ford Company, which was later renamed the Cadillac Automobile Company when Henry Ford resigned.

After several years spent developing prototypes and selling early models, the Ford Model T was launched in 1908. The Model T, also colloquially known as the ‘Tin Lizzie’ and the ‘Flivver,’ was the first automobile using totally interchangeable parts enabling it to be mass-produced. By 1914, Ford’s assembly lines could make an automobile every 93 minutes, and during its life, more than 15 million Model Ts were produced around the world.

Many of the first automobile toys manufactured were based on the popular Ford Model T. All major toy companies of the period produced examples in various forms: pressed steel, tin, cast iron and later die-cast metal toys.

Inspired by his success in bringing a low-cost automobile to the masses, Henry Ford was convinced that he could accomplish the same feat with a small and inexpensive airplane. In 1926 he unveiled the ‘Flying Flivver,’ a small single-seat monoplane that immediately generated much publicity in the press. The Hubley Manufacturing Company, created by John Hubley in Lancaster, Pa., capitalized on this free advertising opportunity and quickly produced the first toy associated with Henry Ford’s aviation interests.

The Hubley ‘Air Ford’ was a small but accurate cast-iron toy version of Ford’s ‘Sky Flivver.’ It was produced in various colors, with the name ‘Air Ford’ cast prominently on the upper-wing surfaces. An all-metal, single-axle landing gear and a nickel-plated propeller complemented the iron casting.

The Flying Flivver was a difficult aircraft to fly due to its diminutive size and small control surfaces, and very few pilots were ever given the opportunity to fly it. But one of these few was Charles Lindberg, who, after setting his transatlantic record fight in 1927, became a close friend to Henry Ford. During a visit to Ford’s new Dearborn (Mich.) Airport in the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindberg took up an offer to fly Ford’s Flivver. As a way of saying thank you, Lindberg glibly offered Henry Ford a ride in his now famous single seat Spirit. To everyone’s great astonishment, Ford accepted, and together they flew around the field in the cramped cockpit. This was to be Henry Ford’s only known flight in an aircraft.

The Flying Flivver, however, was never put into production, and Ford’s enchantment with his ‘airplane for the masses’ ended abruptly when his personal pilot was killed in it in 1928. Hubley immediately ceased production of its toy. Oddly, examples of this short-lived toy are not considered rare today and appear often in the marketplace.

Ford remained convinced that air transportation had a big future and promoted a contest called Ford Reliability Tours, which was won by Dutchman Anthony Fokker, flying his all wooden Fokker F-VII trimotor [see August issue of TCM]. Based on the soundness on the Fokker trimotor concept, Ford immediately had his aircraft division develop a similar but all-new aircraft, the Ford 4-AT Trimotor, using all-metal construction that enabled it to be proclaimed the “world’s safest airliner.” This proved to be a fatal prediction when the famous football player Knute Rockne was killed in a wooden Fokker trimotor accident caused by rotten wings.

The Ford Trimotor, now nicknamed the ‘Tin Goose,’ proved to be very reliable, rugged and safe. The Ford Aircraft Division rapidly became the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer by 1930, and over 100 airline firms around the world used Ford Trimotors By 1929 Hubley had developed and launched an accurate toy of the Fokker design, but perhaps due to its similarity to the Ford design, it was decided not to develop a similarly sized version.

Surprisingly, there are not a lot of early toy examples of Ford’s Trimotor. One of the finest was a large cast-iron toy produced by Kilgore Mfg. Co. of Westerville, Ohio in 1930. The Kilgore toy had nickel-plated engines and propellers, and faithfully replicated the corrugated metal surfaces and complex landing gear of the actual aircraft. This beautiful and accurate casting included the logo of Transcontinental Air Transport, TAT, on the fuselage sides. The Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) airline relied on the Ford aircraft when it established the first transcontinental flight networks in 1929, even offering in-flight meal service en route. TAT later became Trans World Airlines (TWA).

The first firm to produce die-cast metal toys, TootsieToy, had already produced a broad range of Model T Fords cars when it created a small but realistic toy of the Ford Trimotor in the early 1930s. This toy had lead propellers attached to the scale-like radial engines, and a landing gear that featured red wood rims with white rubber tires in the early variant or later all-metal wheels. Produced in a wide variety of colors, this toy remained in production until 1942. Collectors consider the all-black version to be the most difficult to find of all the colors used, followed by the white variant. TootsieToy also produced during this period a wonderful boxed airport set featuring two Ford Trimotors and a lithographed tin hangar. Various other prewar boxed sets included pairs of Trimotors, and excellent examples of the toy are easily found today.

One of the most unusual Ford Trimotor toys was Dent’s 1930 large cast-aluminum example. It wasn’t closely representational of Ford’s aircraft, but today it remains among the hardest to find and most valuable aircraft toys.

Pressed-steel Trimotor toys were also made by Steelcraft and Keystone, among others. It is difficult to say with conviction whether they were based on Ford or Fokker Trimotor designs, as the pressings were not accurate renditions of either aircraft. During this period, the Arcade Mfg. Co. of Freeport, Ill., made a very small cast-iron Trimotor with nickel-plated sheet metal propellers. The C. A. Woods Novelty Co. also made a small, highly accurate slush casting in lead.

Oddly, in the 1960s the Japanese firm, Nomura Toy Industrial Company, produced a precise toy model in tin of the Ford Trimotor with a friction drive. Not only was production in tinplate a complicated and long-outdated method, the color chosen for their Trimotor was soft pink. Today it is one of the most elusive of all tin toy aircraft.

In the 1960 the Hong Kong firm of Bachmann made a large series of historic and popular aircraft and included in its range a nice all-plastic example of the Ford Trimotor.

Henry Ford died in 1947 at the age of 83, but history credits him as an aviation pioneer. This legacy lives on through the many toys based on his incredible Trimotor.