Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/130

 CLINGING TO A PRINCIPLE

and Cooper regarded the juggernaut car for some time in meditative silence.

"Well, I guess you've built a real racer there, all right," Cooper said admiringly.

"Yes, it looks as if I had," Ford answered. "The question is, what good is it? Is there a man on earth who'd try to drive it?"

"Well, I've got some nerve myself, and I don't want to," Cooper admitted. He walked around the car and then looked again at the engine. "How fast would the darn thing go, I wonder?" he said.

"Get in and try her," Ford suggested. Cooper climbed in, Ford cranked the engine, and again sleeping Detroit jumped from its bed. The car leaped and shot down the avenue.

When it roared back again Cooper stopped it in the middle of the street.

"That settles it for me," he said. "She must have made forty miles an hour, and she wasn't half running, at that. I won't take her out on the track."

They confronted the situation gloomily. Couzens was depending on the success of the car