Trivia 1

Long before Dodge built its own cars, the Dodge brothers ran the machine shop that supplied Henry Ford with complete chassis, engines, and transmissions for his earliest Model A and Model N vehicles. That 1903 handshake deal eventually grew into a 5,000-employee operation capable of building a quarter-million cars a year, before the brothers walked away to found their own company in 1914. It’s a piece of trivia most Ford and Dodge fans never learn.

Text stating early Ford vehicles used Dodge engines.

Ask most car people which company built Ford’s earliest production vehicles and they’ll say Ford, obviously. They’d be wrong for the crucial early years, when the same engines rolling into the original Model A and Model N came from a machine shop still fifteen years away from selling a car with its own name on the hood. Two brothers ran that shop, and their handshake deal with a struggling Detroit automaker in 1903 would eventually make them wealthy enough to found one of the most storied performance brands in American history. What did those two companies build together before they became rivals, and why did the partnership fall apart just as both were hitting their stride?

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The 1903 Deal That Built the Model A

On February 23, 1903, John and Horace Dodge formally agreed to supply Henry Ford with 650 complete chassis — engines, transmissions, and axles included — for $250 each. Ford was so short on cash that he couldn’t pay in full, so he offered the brothers a 10 percent stake in his young company as part of the deal. Ford only had to bolt on a body and wheels to finish each car.

From Parts Supplier to 250,000 Cars a Year

The arrangement grew fast. By the spring of 1905, Dodge Brothers was supplying around 400 complete engine-and-transmission ‘rigs’ every month, and by 1910 the operation had outgrown its origins entirely, building a 24-acre, 5,000-employee plant in Hamtramck capable of producing a quarter-million complete cars a year. Ford began developing his own engines around 1905 for the lower-priced Model N, and the Dodge brothers, wary of depending on a single customer, gave Ford the required year’s notice in 1913 and ended the contract in August 1914 — the same year they launched Dodge Brothers Company on their own.

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