Thursday 13th March 1980
Henry Ford II resigned as Chairman of the Ford Motor Company after naming Philip Caldwell his successor. With Ford’s resignation, the era of the Ford family as an automotive dynasty temporarily ended. He reorganized the company and instituted a modern bookkeeping system. His father, Edsel, had been considered a dreamer by Henry I. Like the archetypal ruling families of England, the Ford family followed its own generational legacy: Henry the Great, Edsel the Confessor, and Henry II. It sounds like Shakespeare.
