ThyssenKrupp Magazin

66 EDWARD G. BUDD
though Budd’s real breakthrough came with an order from John and
Horace Dodge, former parts suppliers to Henry Ford who had set up
their own car manufacturing operation in 1914. The Dodge brothers
had heard a lot about the all-steel bodies from Philadelphia over the
previous two years, and were also impressed that they cost $10 less
than the wooden ones then being used. They ordered 5,000 of the allsteel
bodies, which necessitated a move for Budd out of the circus
tent; a year later, the Dodges ordered more than 50,000 bodies from
him. His workforce, just 800 two years before, more than doubled to
2,000, bringing production to a body per minute. With the help of new
welding machines, this rate would soon be raised to two sets per
minute.
The growth continued apace, and just under a decade later the
Budd operation was turning out millions of car bodies for customers
who by now included Ford, Chrysler and Studebaker.
Budd, meanwhile, remained popular among his employees, and
not only because he had secured their jobs: the entrepreneur, who had
grown up in a small town and had started as a trainee in a machinery
business at the age of 17, was accessible, spent more time on the shop
floor than in the office, and knew most of his employees personally.
Shortly after the company was founded, in the midst of World War I, he
gave his employees free life insurance policies, set up a clinic staffed
with a doctor inside the plant, and paid female employees as much as
the men. From the day of the company’s founding, in fact, his employees
shared in its success: Budd understood the concept of sustained
employee motivation better than most of his contemporaries.
And Budd was successful. Most of his potential customers had
grown through the construction of carriages, most of which were made
Edward G. Budd’s factories
were always considered
progressive, as is highlighted
by Budd’s more than 100
patents in automotive and
railroad construction.
One car body
per minute
from wood. Although Budd possessed enough patents to ensure that
no carmaker would be able to press all-steel bodies for several decades
without a license from his company, he was more interested in convincing
the world of the value of his concept than enforcing his copyright
by slowing the triumphal procession of what he saw as the ultimate
progressive material – steel.
While shunning the glamorous life and high-profile public appearances
for himself, Budd liked spectacular advertising campaigns: occasionally
he would arrange to have a car using one of his all-steel bodies
plunged over a cliff, and then challenge his competitors to do the
same with a car using one of their all-wood bodies. Even an elephant
was engaged to prove the stability of a Budd steel roof.
AN ENTREPRENEUR WHO DARED ENTER EUROPE
Budd was also daring when it came to the rapid expansion of his company’s
business activities – indeed, he was too early in venturing to
build his own plant in Detroit, the center of the U.S. automotive industry.
He was drawn to Europe as early as 1924; Citroën showed
great interest in his products, and in this way the Ambi-Budd Presswerk
GmbH was created in Berlin, which in subsequent years became
a supplier to Frankfurt’s Adler-Werke, in which Ambi-Budd held a
stake, as well as to Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Until the
Berlin plant was destroyed in a bomb raid shortly before the end of
World War II, a jeep-style Volkswagen had an Ambi-Budd steel body.
By then, of course, the German company was no longer related to the
U.S. parent.
But the expansion into Europe meant that when the Depression
hit, the simultaneous downswing on both sides of the Atlantic hit Budd
TK Magazine | 1 | 2004 |