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"Little Oxford is
definitely gentry and definitely county. It prides itself on not
being suburban. Yet it is not completely rural. ..There are fast
daily trains for the commuter and an accessible airport for the
air minded. ..It is famous for its many estates, ranging from five
acres to a thousand. .."
 o
wrote the author Faith Baldwin in her popular 1939 romantic novel Station
Wagon Set. She laid her scene for the fictional place, Little
Oxford, from a composite of the many places she knew "on Long
Island, in Westchester and Connecticut, and in Jersey and
Pennsylvania."
It was not a story of station
wagons but of the people who could afford to own them -like the
Pallisters who had "the biggest estate and the highest stone
wall" in Little Oxford.
As portrayed in her book, the
Ford station wagon had become a true American status symbol. No
longer just a utility vehicle to haul people and equipment, it had
been elevated from Ford's commercial line to the top end of the
passenger class.
"She left the car
at the station and saw Bill Niles on the platform. ..She saw the
girl with him -the girl who had sung last night, who had sent Dave
away from her. She was with Niles, clinging to his arm, laughing
up into his face. ..and boarding the train with him. .."
Far up in the north woods at
the big Ford lumber operations of Iron Mountain, Michigan, manager
Walter Nelson was scratching to get more work for his men.
There had always been a
feeling of insecurity here, as far as a man's job was concerned.
It was usually caused by the seasonal two to three month summer
layoff resulting from the change-over in Dearborn to tool up for
the new Ford models. And now, with the car bodies being nearly all
steel, except for station wagon body panels, there was even less
wood being used.
"In 1938 and 1939, there
were only a few sticks of wood left in the passenger job,"
Nelson recalled. "To all intents and purposes, you might say
that wood, as far as passenger jobs were concerned, was
discontinued."
Meanwhile, there were
rumblings and rumors down in Dearborn that Murray's longtime
relationship with Ford purchasing was beginning to crack.
In March of that year, the
department's head, A.M. Wibel, sent a strong letter to C.W. Avery,
president of Murray Corporation, about the high prices quoted to
build the current production of Ford station wagon bodies -and
about Murray's continuing labor problems. He also replied to
Avery's complaint about "the poor quality" of the Ford-
made soybean-based varnish provided for use on the 1939 models.
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A
gateman at Henry Ford's historic Greenfield Village in Dearborn
admires a brand-new '40 Ford Deluxe Station Wagon. The
first wagons with bodies completely built by Ford's own Iron
Mountain plant, these beauties had it all! Handsome styling,
leather seats, sealed-beam headlights, column shift, hydraulic
brakes -all for less than a thousand dollars. |
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"You state," wrote Wibel,
"that you had no trouble during 1938 with varnish on the station wagon.
You are correct. We have had some difficulty in making a varnish that would
satisfactorily dry for you. When the job was made (in 1932) by Baker-Raulang
Company, of Cleveland, it called for a four hour air dry which they brushed
on, and we had no com- plaints whatever from the field. When you took the job
over (in 1933), the station wagons were finished in a different manner and the
varnish that we had been furnishing did not work in your different method. You
now have the privilege of getting the varnish on the outside."
At the time of Wibel's caustic
letter to Murray, Ford had completed a huge new Press Steel
building at its colossal Rouge Plant in Dearborn where all the
company's car bodies would now be made. Briggs was already out of
the picture. Murray Corporation of America, other than designing,
stamping parts for and building station wagon bodies for Ford, was
down to providing front-end sheet metal stampings for the new
Mercury, and frames, seat springs, and specialty fender stampings
for the commercial.
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