FORD’S “AIR FLIVVERS.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 1 December 1925, Page 8

FORD’S “AIR FLIVVERS.”

GN SALE IN STORES

Some of the big department stores are famed for having on sale everything from a pin to a coffin, but one of the greatest shops in the country, that of John YVanamaker, in New York, has set out to “lick creation” in having on display for sale Ford aeroplanes as “regular merchandise.” The retail price of the first publicly displayed for sale “air flivvers” of the multi-million-aire of Detroit are quoted at 25,000 dollars each.

The first plane for the great store in New York, the J.W., No. 1, left the Ford airport at Dearborn, Michigan, loaded with an unassenibled automobile truck and merchandise, and after stopping at Cleveland for fuel readied Curtiss Field safely. The truck was assembled there, and in turn carried the aeroplane to the Wanamaker’s department store in New York

The ’plane was indentical with the machine that made the best elapsed time in the Edsel Ford endurance test a week previously. Graphically illustrating his idea of the value of aircraft with a jab of his hand and the words ‘ ’zip —-and you are there!” Henry Ford described the work being done in his laboratory at Detroit toward developing an aeroplane for common use. His laboratories at Dearborn, Ford said, are already developing a motor for this type of aeroplane. It will be an eight-cylinder air-cooled Y-typc motor, 'developing 200 h.p. and weighing. about 21b to the horse-power. It jyjll have; he -said, all of the -economical characteristics- of automobile motors.

' The manufacturer stated that the view*motor would ho thoroughly tested in an aeroplane within a short time. “'Hie motor-car has’ mixed people up so thoroughly that you cannot fool any American, (about any part Jf>F his country,” he said. “But they are still fooled about other parts of the world. Hie aeroplanes will stop that. When the aeroplane becomes general it will put power into people’s .bands just as the motor car has, and when international financiers or politicians propose a war the people will ..ask why..