Henry Ford quietly built at least eight boats in the early 1920s, and the last survivor, named Evangeline, carried a 450-horsepower V12 engine repurposed from a World War I fighter plane. It reportedly hit 49 mph in 1924, fast enough to outrun dedicated race boats of the day, before a fire at the Gold Cup ended Ford’s interest in racing on water for good.
Henry Ford apparently had “several†boats during his life, built between 1920 and 1924. This particular one – the last of eight built – is the only one that exists today. It’s also the only one to have been ordered by Henry himself.
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It was named Evangeline, after Ford racing driver Raymond Dahlinger’s wife. More so, the story goes that Evangeline was a long-time Ford employee and close friend of Henry’s: she quickly became his personal secretary and was apparently one of the ten most influential people close to the Ford family.
So, that’s the name, let’s talk about the boat. It’s 33ft, and was built over the winter of 1923-1924 by the Hacker Boat Company (again, another lifelong Ford friend), and Ford itself. It featured a wraparound windscreen, louvered deck ventilators and four bucket-seat cockpit arrangement. Said features were wrapped into a bodyshape that today still looks really, really lovely.
Lovely power, too. The engine was lifted from a marine-converted World War I Liberty aircraft engine: a monster 27-litre V12 producing 450hp, and 1,250lb ft of torque. Suffice to say, power wasn’t really an issue.
What became an issue was an incident during the 1924 Gold Cup boat race: one of the eight boats Ford had – the one dubbed ‘Nine Nighty Nine’ – caught fire, and Henry Ford was said to have halted his involvement in boat racing for the time being. The whereabouts of the other seven boats remains a mystery, but Evangeline continued to be used.
An aircraft engine built to power World War I fighter planes ended up strapped into a 33-foot pleasure boat commissioned by the man who put America on wheels. Henry Ford was not just building cars in the early 1920s — he quietly built at least eight boats, and the last of them is the only one that survives today. It carries a name most people associate with poetry, not horsepower, and an engine so overbuilt for a personal boat that it outran actual race boats of its era. One bad afternoon at a boat race would end Ford’s interest in the water for good.
A World War I Fighter Engine, Repurposed for the Water
The boat, named Evangeline after Raymond Dahlinger’s wife — a longtime Ford employee and Henry’s personal secretary — was built over the winter of 1923-1924 by the Hacker Boat Company working alongside Ford’s own team. Its 33-foot hull carried a wraparound windscreen, louvered deck ventilators, and a four-bucket-seat cockpit layout. Power came from a marine-converted Liberty L-12 aircraft engine, originally designed for WWI fighter planes: a 27-liter V12 producing 450 horsepower and 1,250 lb-ft of torque, enough to push Evangeline to a clocked 49 mph in 1924 — faster than many purpose-built race boats of the period.
Why Ford Walked Away from Boat Racing Entirely
One of Ford’s eight boats caught fire during the 1924 Gold Cup race, and the incident was enough to convince Henry Ford to step back from boat racing altogether. Evangeline stayed in Dearborn for years afterward before being sold in the 1950s, passing through New York and eventually Long Island in 1961, and finally landing in Southern California by 1982 — still unrestored. Decades later it crossed the auction block, drawing collector interest less for its Ford badge than for its status as the last physical proof of a chapter in Ford’s history most people never learn about.
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