Detroit Time Capsule Searching for Its Audience

Detroit Time Capsule (DTC) is a collection of 75 of my best Detroit Fornology blog posts gleaned from over 500 posts written over the last decade. DTC tells the story of the city's origin with the arrival of Antoine Cadillac in 1701 to the revitalization of Detroit as one of America's "comeback" cities of the twenty-first century. Each compact entry is three to five pages long for easy, convenient reading.

Published in 2022, this anthology is a trip down memory lane for Baby Boomers in the Greater Detroit area, and an entertaining historical survey for younger Detroiters or recent arrivals to our city of events and people that left their mark on Detroit.

People like Father Gabriel Richard, "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Henry and Edsel Ford, Joe Louis, Berry Gordy, George Pierrot, Mort Neff, Bill Kennedy, Soupy Sales, Edythe Fern Melrose (Lady of Charm), Ollie Fretter, Martha Jean "The Queen," Connie Kalitta, Alex Karras, Leaping Larry Chene, and Shirley Muldowney to name a few.

These posts originally appeared in my Fornology blog but have since been updated and reedited for this edition. As I pull the plug on my blog in the next year or so, this collection will become a collectors' item that includes topics and information you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else. My blog posts will fade into cyberspace, but the book will endure. Makes a great gift for former Detroiter's too.

My Amazon Author Page

The Elusive Purple Gang--Radio Free Flint Podcast

 The Elusive Purple Gang recounts Detroit's violent Prohibition gang and their meteoric rise and fall. 

This Radio Free Flint podcast is hosted by former Genesee County [Michigan] prosecutor Arthur Busch. His podcasts are committed to public service and social justice. 

Arthur Busch --Radio Free Flint

 

Busch shares the voices of America's rust belt, their blue collar values, and their way of life. Enjoy my interview with this skillful moderator. 

The Purple Gang's Rise and Fall

Walter P. Chrysler--Unlikely Automobile Titan

Walter P. Chrysler with his Chrysler Six.

Walter Percy Chrysler was born in the prairie town of Wamego, Kansas on April 2, 1875. As a young boy, he admired his father and the work he did as a railroad engineer for the Kansas Pacific railroad. He loved the excitement of the roundhouse and the mightly roar of the steam locomotives that were serviced there. 

Sometimes, young Walter was allowed to ride with his father in the locomotive cab as the train cut through the quiet countryside. He would pull the whistle cord announcing the passage of the train through small towns and sleeping villages. 

Walter's early association with the raw power of the steam locomotive instilled in him a fascination with mechanics, but Walter's father wanted his son to enter college after high school. Much to his father's disappointment, seventeen-year-old Walter began a four-year mechanic's apprenticeship in a railroad machine shop sweeping the floor.

Walter was anxious to become a journeyman machinist and master mechanic, so he could afford to marry his high school sweetheart. To supplement his chosen career, Walter was an avid reader of Scientific American magazine, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree from International Correspondence Schools headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

Chrysler worked for several Western railroads as a itinerant mechanic who soon developed a reputation as a gifted, problem- solving engineer. He was particularly skillful at fine-tuning the valves of the massive steam-powered locomotives. After a year of traveling as a journeyman mechanic, he landed a foreman's assistant job at the Sante Fe roundhouse in Wellington, Kansas. 

After working another year there, Chrysler was able to save some money. He was homesick for his hometown, but more importantly, he was lovesick for Miss Della V. Forker, his Ellis, Kansas girlfriend whom he married on June 4, 1901.

 

Della Viola Folker

The bride's family and friends felt Della had married beneath her station in life. They preferred she marry a professional or a businessman rather than a train mechanic. Her parents did not fully appreciate what hard work and ambition lurked beneath the surface of their son-in-law. 

The happy couple started married life with $60. They spent the next two years in Salt Lake City where Walter worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway at thirty cents an hour for a ten-hour day. He rose through the ranks from crew foreman, shop foreman, and master mechanic. As his reputation for plant efficiency grew, so did his family with two daughters and two sons. He needed to find a job that paid more.

In 1908 at the age of thirty-three, Walter Chrysler was offered the job of general works manager of the American Locomotive Company (ALC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at a starting salary of $8,000 a year. In two years, he turned the ailing company around by showing a profit for the first time in years. The company's bankers took note. Chrysler was asked if he had ever thought about entering the automobile business. Of course he had.

***

Chrysler was an automobile enthusiast from the beginning of the industry. In 1908, he went to the Chiciago Auto Show and fell in love with a Locomobile touring car with a $5,000 price tag. He could only justify spending $700 from a family savings account, but he had to have that car. 

Chrysler borrowed $4,300 from a local banker when he found a friend who co-signed for the loan. The car was painted ivory white with red interior trim and a cushioned bench seat. The canvas top was khaki-colored.

1908 Locomobile with equipped tool box on the running board.

 

Rather than drive the car to Pittsburgh over unimproved country roads, Chrysler shipped the car home by rail. Once in town, he hired a team of horses to tow his new car home. For the next three months, Chrysler disassembled and reassembled the car no less than seven times. After he was familiar with the car's mechanical systems, he gassed it up and became a motorist. Soon after he paid back his car note, Chrysler bought a six-cylinder Stevens-Duryea.

The following year, Chrysler was summoned to New York City to discuss a business proposition. He met for lunch with Charles W. Nash, president of Buick Motor Company, who was looking for someone to become production manager at his plant to reduce costs and increase profits. 

Nash asked Chrysler what ALC was paying him yearly. By then, he was pulling down $12,000 a year. Nash offered Chrysler a 50% cut in pay with yearly performance bonuses to move his family to Flint, Michigan and manage Buick Motors.

Recognizing the long term future of personal transportation, Chrysler turned his back on the railroad industry in a move that would change his life forever. After eighteen months under Chrysler's direction, the Buick line outperformed other General Motors models. Production soared from 50 cars a day to 550 cars a day. He was soon promoted to vice president and general manager of Buick Motors for the next three years earning $50,000 a year.

In 1915, original General Motors founder William "Willie" Durant bought back his company after a hostile takeover by bankers and stockholders. He traded stock from his successful startup company Chevrolet and brought the Chevy brand under the GM banner, once again becoming the president and chairman of the board.

William "Willie" Durant

 

Chrysler turned in his resignation, but Durant recognized his value to the corporation. Durant offered Chrysler a three-year contract making him president of Buick at $10,000 a month salary with a yearly half-a-million-dollar bonus of GM stock. He would report to nobody but Durant himself. 

Under Chrysler's leadership, Buick became GM's strongest brand and the most successful automobile brand in the country, but Durant and Chrysler had different management styles which led Chrysler to resign after his three-year contract ran out. Durant bought out Chrysler's GM stock for ten million dollars making him one of the richest men in the country. Their parting was amicable.

Within the year, Walter Chrysler assumed directorship of the Willys-Overland Motor Company of Toledo, Ohio, for a one million dollar a year salary. Two years later, he left Willys-Overland over disagreements with the company's owner. 

In 1921, Chrysler bought controlling interest in the struggling Maxwell Motor Company. Over the next several years, he phased out the Maxwell brand which was drowning in debt. Chrysler and several engineers he hired away from Studebaker Motors developed a high compression, six-cylinder engine. With auto bodies built by the Fisher Brothers, the new car was named the Chrysler Six and took the automobile world by storm in 1924. 

The basic model included at no extra cost to the buyer, the first high-compression, inline six-cylinder engine with a top speed of 70 mph; the first replaceable oil and air filters to extend engine life; full pressure lubrication from an external oil pump; a fluid drive transmission for smooth shifting and greater performance; four-wheel hydraulic brakes for improved stopping distance; the first emergency brake as standard equipment in a low-priced automobile; and the first fuel and temperature gauges on the dashboard. The Chrysler Six sold 32,000 units for under $2,000 each in its first year of production.

In 1925, the Maxwell Motor Corporation was reorganized into the Chrysler Corporation. The old Chalmers engine plant was purchased and renovated for production of Chrysler's new engine, but it soon became clear that the new corporation still had trouble keeping up with demand. 

In 1928, Chrysler purchased the Dodge Brothers' state-of-the-art factory complex and its extensive inventory from Dillon, Read & Company for $170,000,000, much of it in Chrysler stock. That same year, he created the Plymouth brand as Chrysler's low-priced competition for Ford and Chevy. In what seemed like overnight success, Chrysler Corporation became one of Detroit's Big Three automakers.

Also in 1928, Chrysler's adult sons showed no interest in the automobile business, so their father created a separate real estate venture to be managed by them. Between 1928 and 1930, he personally supervised the construction of the seventy-seven story Chrysler Building in New York City, which remains one of the world's great art deco monuments.

Model of Chrysler Building

 

 

 

For his skillful piloting of the Chrysler Corporation into one of America's Big Three automakers and his undertaking of the construction of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, Walter P. Chrysler was honored as Time magazine's 1928 Man of the Year. In 1935, he stepped down from the presidency of Chrysler but continued on the board of directors.

***

On May 26, 1938, sixty-three-year-old Walter Chrysler suffered a stroke at this Long Island, New York estate. While he recovered at home, his beloved wife Della died just over two months later from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of fifty-eight on August 8th. Walter Chrysler survived for two more years before dying from a second stroke on August 18, 1940 at the age of sixty-five.

A notice was posted at all Chrysler plants on Wednesday, August 21st, that all machinery would be shut down at 10:00 am and workers were to spend fifteen minutes in silence as a tribute to Chrysler while his funeral services were being held at All Saints' Church in Great Neck, Long Island, New York City.

All Chrysler Corporation vice presidents and directors were named honorary pallbearers. Speaking at the funeral service, manufacturer and Detroit Tiger owner Walter O. Briggs said, "Walter P. Chrysler symbolized the vision and courage which made America great."

President of Chrysler Corporation of Canada John D. Mansfield said, "Walter P. Chrysler was one of the great industrialists of modern times. His death has taken from the world one of its giants." 

Richard T. Frankensteen, director of the United Auto Workers (UAW) spoke for the rank and file, "Chrysler's passing is cause on the part of Chrysler workers for deep regret. Despite temporary disagreements, Walter P. Chrysler was a man sincerely desirous of working to improve the lot of his workers with his general principles of fair dealing with labor."

After Chrysler settled a contract dispute with the UAW's sit-down strike in 1937, he summed up his pride and appreciation in the local Detroit newspapers for his workforce. "There is more to industry than money and machines. There are men. I have worked too many years on account of my own family to be forgetful that it is their women and children that men keep on working. How could I be unmindful of that obligation when I am so proud of what we have accomplished together?" 

Walter Chrysler identified with is workforce because of his years of personal struggles as an underpaid mechanic and machinist. With all of his triumphs, he was at his core a simple man of simple tastes who was happiest when he was out in his factories rubbing elbows with the men who stood where he once labored.

Walter and Della were interred in their family masoleum in Sleepy Hollow, Tarryton, New York. They were survived by daughters Thelma and Bernice, and sons Walter Jr. and John.

Henry Ford had a different approach to the United Auto Workers and labor relations. 

Downriver Detroit's Vagabond Showman Nick Butsicaris

Rick Wiesend (Tim Tam) with Nick Butsicaris, Dan Wiesend, Earl Rennie, Don Grundman, and John Ogen.

I remember Nick Butsicaris best from sophomore gym class at Allen Park High School. I don't know who took more dodge balls in the face--him or me. But by senior year, Nick became an instant celebrity as a member of the singing group Tim Tam and the Turnons.

The Tim Tams teamed up with a local band of talented freshmen from Allen Park High named The Satellites. Together, they created a rock doo-wop sound reminescent of The Four Seasons. Their 1966 debut record "Wait a Minute" sold 30,000 copies in the first month of release charting #76 on Billboard's National Chart. In a 2019 national radio survey of "The Top 100 Songs of the 1960s," it was voted #40.

But timing is everything in the music business. Harmonic male singing groups lost favor with fans by the late 1960s who couldn't hear enough of the fresh new sound of the British Invasion that dominated the radio air waves. Alas, after several recordings, the Tim Tams became a one-hit wonder--neither the first nor the last.

When I ran into Nick fifty years later at a class reunion event, I had no idea he had been the manager of some of rock music's most iconic groups of the 1970s and the 1980s. After Tim Tam and the Turnons disbanded in 1969, Nick and his friend David Leone formed a startup company called Diversified Management Agency (DMA). The partnership launched Nick on a memorable show business career. Nick shortened his last name to Caris because it was "faster and easier to sign contracts and checks."

Nick began managing and handling bookings for many of the Motor City's high octane rock & roll acts like Mitch Rider, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, and Alice Cooper at venues like Detroit's Grande Ballroom, the Olympia, the Masonic Temple, local sports stadiums, and university fieldhouses. When those acts hit nationally, DMA went from a local boutique agency to a national business.

Nick to the left again with bare chested Ted Nugent after a Cobo Hall sellout in the 1970s.

Nick toured with his groups throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His job was to interface with promoters and tour managers, manage his bands and their road crews, and take care of the tour's business arrangements. Fans pay to see a great show, but behind the scenes, the business was often a three-ring circus. 

When I asked him about the downside of the job, Nick was quick to respond, "Being on the road so much. Touring takes its toll on everyone and their families. Many of the performers don't get to see their kids grow up, and they miss many important events in their kid's lives.

"That's just one of the many costs of fame and success. Some people didn't survive the drug craze. Without a supportive wife and family, I might have been a casualty too. But I kept my priorities straight. I had a job to do and a family to support."

Nick said the high point of his career was standing on the California Jamfest stage on April 6, 1974 at the Riverside, Ontario Speedway in California--considered by many to be the last of the classic rock festivals before the corporate takeover of the rock business.

"Looking out over several-hundred-thousand screaming fans, I kept thinking 'Not bad for a kid from Detroit.' DMA managed most of the groups that performed at the original Cal Jamfest."

Nick gets his nephews a photo opp backstage with Kiss.

In the late 1980s, Nick left the Detroit rock & roll scene for the bright lights of New York City joining the William Morris Talent Agency managing headline groups like The Eagles, Nazareth, Journey, Styx, Foreigner, Steve Miller, Aerosmith, and many others. Nick left William Morris at the end of the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over Tour in 1994. Towards the end of his career, he managed tribute shows that traveled internationally, like The Australian Pink Floyd Show and The Music of Led Zeppelin--A Rock Symphony. During his successful management career, Nick has earned dozens of gold and platinum record awards--several went multi-platinum.

When asked if he missed the rock & roll business, Nick replied, "Every time I see MTV or VH1 and see music videos of bands I've managed, it's like watching a movie of my life. It's easy to get nostalgic for the good times, but the business has evolved and so have the movers and the shakers. It's been very exciting to be a part of show business, but I'm content to sit on the sidelines. Rock & Roll touring is a young man's game." Nick has returned happily to his Downriver Detroit roots.

"Wait a Minute" by Tim Tam and the Turnons, and Bob Seger and the Last Herd singing "East Side Story."

Myron "Mikey" Selik--Junior Purple Gang Alumnus

Myron "Mikey" Selik and Harry "H.F." Fleisher in Jackson Prison.

Myron "Mikey" Selik was born November 16, 1912. He reached adulthood the same year Prohibiton ended which threw the rackets into a state of confusion. Drug trafficking, gambling, and labor racketeering were the primary money earners for organized crime now, but Selik seems to have been most involved with burglary and extortion. He was mentored by Harry Fleisher--one of the original Purple Gang members.

In 1944, Republican party boss Frank McKay and some underworld Detroit gangsters wanted Michigan State Senator Warren G. Hooper killed. Hooper was scheduled to testify before a grand jury about graft payouts to legislators for voting against gambling reform in the horseracing industry. Organized crime stood to lose lots of money.

Senator Warren G. Hooper

 

 

Senator Hooper confessed under oath to Ingham County Prosecutors that he had accepted a $500 bribe to vote against a bill designed to protect against cheating in the horseracing industry. In exchange for immunity, he was willing to testify before a Michigan grand jury.

Only forty years old, Hooper was murdered at about 4:30 in the afternoon on January 11, 1945 when his car was run off the road on Highway 99 while he was driving home to Albion from the state capitol in Lansing. Hooper was shot in the head three times and his car was burning when the Michigan State Police arrived on the scene. A witness came forward saying he saw a small man looking into Hooper's car when he drove by. Selik was 5'/6.5" tall and 130 pounds.

Hooper's hat with bullet holes.

 

Hooper's body was taken from the car by two passing motorists who threw snow on his smoldering clothes and on the inside of the car to dampen the fire. From examining the crime scene and Hooper's wounds, investigators determined that Hooper was shot at close range by someone in the car with him. The car was not torched. The fire was started by a lit cigarette the senator was smoking when he was shot. Detectives noted small footprints in the snow.

Ingham County and Michigan State Police were clueless about who murdered Hooper until there was a break in the case. Sam "Sammy A" Abramowitz was out on parole for a robbery conviction. When he was implicated in the assassination plot, he plea bargained with the Ingham County prosecutor and turned informant.

Abramowitz did not know who pulled the trigger, but he did confess before a grand jury that four men tried to recruit him to participate in the hit for $500. The four men were Harry and Sammy Fleisher, original Purple Gang members; Pete Mahoney, an associate who just happened to be there; and Myron "Mikey" Selik, Junior Purple Gang member. The conversation took place at O'Larry's Bar on Dexter Avenue in Detroit--a known underworld hangout.

The men were convicted of conspiracy to murder Senator Hooper and sentenced to five years in prison. Mikey Selik and Harry Fleisher were also charged and convicted of armed robbery of the Aristocrat Club--a Pontiac, Michigan gambling resort they were shaking down for protection money. Both men were sentenced to 25 to 50 years on the robbery rap. After their appeal was denied, Harry Fleisher and Mikey Selik skipped town in 1947. They were at large for a couple of years.

Selik used the alias Max Green and went underground in New York City. Harry Fleisher traveled with a woman not his wife, under the assumed names of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Goldwyn of Toledo, Ohio. They were sunning themselves on the beach in Pompano, Florida when the FBI caught up with him on January 18, 1950. A year later on February 1, 1951, Max Green (38)--alias for Myron Selik--was arrested with three other men in an unsuccessful $20,000 fur and jewelry robbery in the Bronx, New York. Both Fleisher and Selik were extradited to Michigan to serve their prison sentences.

When released, Harry Fleisher went straight and became a foreman in a Detroit steel warehouse. Fleisher died in 1978 at the age of seventy-five. Myron Selik is believed to have returned to the gambling rackets and ran a bookmaking operation. Selik died on August 7, 1996 at the age of eighty-three.

More on Harry Fleisher 

Early Detroit River Speedboat Racing History

The Gold Cup--officially known as the American Power Boat Association (APBA) Challenge Cup--is the oldest continually-awarded trophy in all of motorsports. This huge trophy dates back to 1904 when the motorboat race was held in New York. In those early days, boats plowed through the water rather than skimming the surface. The first winning boat measured 59 feet with an 8.5 foot beam; its 110 hp Standard motor averaged 23 mph.

In 1915, the community-owned Miss Detroit won the Gold Cup on Manhasset Bay, New York. On race day, Miss Detroit's pilot could not be found, so crew member Johnny Milot jumped into the cockpit at the last minute without any protective gear next to riding mechanic Jack Beebe. Milot took a pounding on the first turn and heaved up his guts, so Beebe took over and won the race. The Miss Detroit team earned the right to defend the Gold Cup in home waters.

The single-step hydroplane was powered by a 250 hp Sterling engine. The revolutionary hydroplane design gave the boat the ability to plane over the water's surface and break the 60 mph speed barrier. The decisive win spelled the end of the speedboat displacement era and the beginning of the hydroplane era.

Detroit, Michigan became the Boat Racing Capital of North America surplanting New York as the watersport's epicenter. The Detroit River track was 2.5 miles long for a 5 mile circuit. Beginning in 1917, industrialist Garfield (Gar) Wood became the sport's first superstar winning five consecutive Gold Cup victories. During the winter of 1921-1922, the APBA changed the Gold Cup rules to make racing more competitive and affordable because Wood's boats were unbeatable. Wood retired from Gold Cup racing.

Gar Wood also won the prestigious British Harmsworth Trophy nine times in international competition. In 1932, Wood piloted Miss America X --powered by four supercharged Packard V-12 engines producing 6,400 hp, setting a waterspeed record that went unbroken for over thirty years.

In addition to Gar Wood's unchallenged reign, I found a couple of other noteworthy Gold Cup races on the Detroit River. In the 1933 competition, Dodge Motor Company heir, Horace Dodge Jr. entered eight hydrofoils in the race. El Lagarto--also known as The Leaping Lizard of Lake George (New York)--left the Dodge boats in its wake.

Due to gas rationing for War War II, the APBA suspended its Gold Cup competitions from 1941 through 1945. The race resumed in Detroit on Labor Day in 1946 to huge interest. Big Band leader Guy Lombardo piloted Tempo VI garnering lots of pre-race publicity for the sport. After a hard-fought race, Lombardo won a spectacular victory by breaking Gar Wood's average 70.412 mph lap record for the 30 mile race by 0.478 mph. Gar Wood was in the grandstands to see his twenty-six-year-old Gold Cup record broken by the bandleader.

More on industrialist Gar Wood

The Ford V-8 Gives G-Men Run For Their Money

Henry Ford with his Miracle V-8 Engine--1932

Midway through the 1927 Model T year, Henry Ford announced he was shutting down operations in 25 of 36 Ford plants across the country to develop a new model to retain his company's hold on the low-priced market. The 1928 Model A was a big success with its new streamlined styling and a beefy, four-cylinder engine that performed favorably with Chevrolet's inline, six-cylinder. But Chevy's advertising slogan "A Six for the Price of a Four," captured the imagination of the car-buying public and Chevy was on pace to outsell Fords.

"If the public wants more cylinders, we'll build an eight-cylinder," Henry Ford told a group of hand-picked engineers. His goal was to produce an affordable V-8 engine for FoMoCo's low-cost line of cars. Ford did not invent the V-8 engine; in fact, Ford's Lincoln Division had offered them for years. But those engines were heavy, complex, and far too expensive for the low-priced market.

By casting the engine block in one piece of alloy steel, parts were eliminated and assembly was simplified. After much trial and error, FoMoCo offered its first Flathead [side valve] V-8 in February of 1932 as the successor to the Model A's four-cylinder engine. The 1932 Model 18 soon became known simply as the Ford V-8. The engineering of this innovative, affordable engine represented Henry Ford's last mechanical triumph for the company he founded. Ford was sixty-nine years old.

To accommodate the V-8's new engine dimensions, the Model 18 boasted a new frame with a wheelbase that was six inches longer than the Model A. The chassis for the Model A was simply two straight, steel rails. The Model 18 had an outward curved chassis with cross members welded-in for strength. The wider rear end gave the car more stability at high speeds which appealed to a specialized portion of the Ford V-8's fan base.

The Model 18's transmission was a manual, three-speed Sychromesh which greatly improved performance with a top speed of 65 mph in 1932. As improvements were made on the engine, horsepower climbed and speeds increased to 76 mph and beyond.

The Model 18 Ford V-8 came equipped with an electric fuel pump which allowed the gasoline tank to be positioned underneath the rear of the car for improved passenger safety. A high-pressure oil pump lubricated the internal workings of the engine. Rubber engine mounts reduced vibration and rubber weather stripping eliminated mechanical squeaks and rattles in the doors and the engine compartment.

1932 Model 18 Ford V-8

The Model 18 debuted in the Highland Park Ford Showroom on Woodward Avenue. Interest was high, but sales were slower than expected because of the Great Depression. Still the car sold a million in 1932 and the same number in 1933.

In 1934, Ford designer Joe Galamb updated the body of the Ford V-8 with a sweeping grill resembling a Medieval shield. The headlamps were built into the car's front end, rather than bolted to an old-fashioned headlamp bracket spread across the front of the car. The Ford V-8 was a brilliant performer winning road races and hill-climbing contests across the United States.

Restyled 1934 Ford V-8

The Ford V-8 became a favorite of bank robbers in the mid-1930s. John Dillinger broke out of jail in Crown Point, Indiana by whittling a piece of wood to look like a handgun. He used black shoe polish to disguise the phoney weapon and bluffed his way out of his cell. He then hijacked Sheriff Lillian Holley's new Ford V-8 parked outside of the jail and escaped. Two-months later on May 16, 1934, Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger allegedly wrote Henry Ford:

Hello Old Pal,

Arrived here at 10:00 am today. Would like to drop in and see you. You have a wonderful car. Been driving it for three weeks. It's a treat to drive one. Your slogan should be, drive a Ford and watch all other cars fall behind you. I can make any other car take a Ford's dust.

Bye-Bye,
John Dillinger

The provenance of the letter has never been established. Ford turned the letter over to the FBI, but they determined it was fake. Six weeks after the letter was received, John Dillinger was gunned down by G-Men in front of a Chicago movie theater on July 22, 1934, so the letter can never be properly authenticated.

Seventy-five years later, another Dillinger letter was found in Henry Ford's FBI file after a Freedom of Information search. This letter was dated May 6, 1934, at 7:00 pm.

Dear Mr. Ford,

I want to thank you for building the Ford V-8 as fast and sturdy a car as you did; otherwise, I would not have gotten away from the coppers in that Wisconsin, Minnesota case.

Yours till I have the pleasure of seeing you,

John Dillinger

This letter is believed to have more validity than the other letter Henry Ford leaked to the press. That letter was probably penned by some company adman. It is thought by Ford historians that because of the reference to escaping from the police, this rediscovered letter was not publicly acknowledged by FoMoCo.

Police departments all over the United States represented Ford's largest buyers of fleet vehicles, so Henry Ford, rather than risk angering law enforcement, turned the original letter over to the FBI where it languished for three-quarters of a century. That letter, though barely legible, is thought to be legitimate.

That was not the first endorsement Henry Ford's V8 received from gangsters. A month before the Dillinger letter was written, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame wrote Ford on April 10, 1934.

"While I have still got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedon from trouble the Ford has even other car skinned and even if my business hasen't been strickly legal it don't hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8."

Handwriting analysts question the authenticity of the letter. Some believe Bonnie may have written the letter for Clyde; others believe it was the brainchild of the Ford publicity machine. Forty days after the letter was dated, Bonnie and Clyde were shot dead by a posse of Texas Rangers and local police on a county road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934.

The stolen 1934 Ford V-8 Deluxe Sedan was riddled by 112 armor-piercing bullets. The coroner's report indicated 17 entrance wounds in Clyde Barrow and 26 in Bonnie Parker. When the car was returned to its rightful owner, it immediately began to tour the country as a notorious attraction at county fairs and carnivals.

Bonnie and Clyde Death Car

At least half a dozen fake death cars also toured the United States. The authenticated Bonnie and Clyde death car has the car's original registration number stamped three times on the car--the engine, the transmission, and the frame.

The original car is usually housed behind plexiglass at Whiskey Pete's Hotel and Casino in Primm, Nevada, but as of January 2022, it is part of an exhibit on loan to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum in Simi Valley, California.

Handwriting Analysis of Clyde Barrow's letter