THE FORD-GENERAL MOTORS rivalry has gone abroad. It has even ascended into the clouds. Let General Motors announce that its new automobile plant near Antwerp, Belgium, is nearly completed; Ford buys a site at Edgewater, N. J., at which to assemble Ford parts and load ships for the export trade, and his son Edsel bends a silver ceremonial spade in his eagerness to break ground for a $25,000,000 Ford plant in England, designed to supply Britain with 300,000 cars yearly and to furnish parts for the Continent.

A few weeks ago the Ford Company, largest in the skies, announced a slash in prices on airplanes. The public looked inquiringly at General Motors. With a characteristic nourish that organization has leaped into the aircraft field; it has acquired virtual control of the Fokker Aircraft Corporation, Ford’s runner-up. That Ford-General Motors competition will mean much to the future of aviation seems assured. Last year 4,346 planes were produced in the United States. Hereafter the annual output is likely to be much larger.

Such developments as these may be more meaningful, though they attract less attention, than long hops or even such speed and stunt flying as that for which Lieutenant A. J. Williams was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, though distance flights, speed tests, and stunting, when properly conducted, make important contributions to the practical side of air travel. The Graf Zeppelin’s second attempt to reach the United States from Germany indicated that there is still much to be done on this side. That it was able to land safely, with four of its five engines stalled, may have been due to good fortune as well as to the undoubted skill of its skipper and the cooperation of French air officials.

Source: Outlook – May 29, 1929