Before building their own cars, the Dodge brothers built most of Henry Ford's
Horace and John Dodge started in 1900 as a Detroit machine shop, and for Ford's original Model A they supplied the whole chassis, leaving Ford to bolt on a body and wheels. A $10,000 stake in Ford eventually returned them about $34.9 million, some of it after they sued him over dividends.
The brothers' shop made precision engine and chassis parts for Olds and the young Ford Motor Company. When Henry Ford halted dividends in 1916 to pay for his River Rouge complex, the Dodges went to court to protect their roughly one million dollars a year. Ford responded by buying out his shareholders, handing the brothers some $25 million on top of nearly $9.9 million in dividends already earned.
Their own car arrived in 1914, the four-cylinder Model 30-35, pitched a notch above the Model T. It used an all-steel body when most cars worldwide still hid wooden frames under their panels, and a 12-volt electrical system decades before that became normal. The cars proved tough in army service: General Pershing took a fleet of them on the 1916 expedition into Mexico, and around 12,800 Dodge cars and light trucks served in the First World War, many as ambulances and repair trucks.
Then everything unravelled at once. In 1920, with the company still second in American sales, John died of pneumonia in January and Horace died in December. Their widows sold the firm in 1925 to the bankers Dillon, Read & Co. for at least $146 million, then the largest cash deal in history. Under a board chaired by a banker with no car experience, sales fell to 13th place by 1927, and in 1928 the new Chrysler Corporation bought Dodge in a stock deal valued at $170 million, gaining a factory and a dealer network to fight Ford and Chevrolet.
Inside Chrysler, Dodge became the mid-priced brand above Plymouth. The K-platform compacts it helped launch for 1981, and the Caravan built on them, are credited with rescuing Chrysler in the 1980s. After passing through Daimler, Cerberus and Fiat, the brand is now part of Stellantis.
Source: Dodge
