# A Mercedes in Detroit


**INTERNAL MEMORANDUM — FORD MOTOR COMPANY**

**Piquette Avenue Plant, Detroit, Michigan**

**TO:** Mr. Henry Ford

**FROM:** Chief Engineer, Special Projects Division

**RE:** Findings — Unidentified Motorcar, Recovered October 1913

**CLASSIFICATION:** Confidential

Mr. Ford,

As instructed, my team has spent the past eleven days disassembling the automobile recovered from the roadside near Woodward Avenue. I regret to inform you that our findings have raised more questions than they have answered, and I confess a measure of professional humility I have not felt since my apprentice days.

The vehicle bears a badge reading "Mercedes-Benz," a marque I am told operates out of Stuttgart, in the German Empire. Beyond that badge, sir, nothing about this machine resembles anything Stuttgart — or Turin, or Paris, or Detroit — has ever produced.

The body is a single, seamless shell of pressed steel alloy, painted in a lacquer so fine it shows no brush marks even under magnification. There are no visible rivets. Herr Voss, our metallurgist, tested a shaving of the frame and found it will not corrode, will not easily bend, and resists our files as though it were tempered glass.

The engine defies me entirely. It is sealed — no belts, no external valves I can identify, and no crank. There is a small aperture beneath the hood fitted with a socket of a design none of us recognize, copper terminals arranged with an exactness that suggests electrical current rather than combustion, though I found no evidence of a magneto or battery large enough to drive a motor of this size. It is as though the machine breathes on air alone.

Inside, the seats are upholstered in a leather-like material too supple to be leather, stitched by a machine, not a hand — the tolerances are too perfect. There is glass on all sides, curved, clear as still water, through which the driver would have full vision in every direction. Beneath the dashboard we found a panel of small glass windows, dark and lifeless now, wired to nothing we can trace to any purpose we understand.

Mr. Ford, I have built engines since I was fourteen years old. I have toured the shops of Panhard and Peugeot. I have read every trade paper from Manchester to Milan. I tell you plainly: this car is not ahead of its time. It does not belong to any time we know.

We found no papers, no manufacturer's plate beyond the badge, and — as you are aware — no trace of the man the police believe was driving it. Only his coat, folded neatly on the seat, as if he expected to return to it.

I do not know what the Germans are building in their laboratories. I do not know if this was born of Stuttgart at all, or of something further afield that merely wears its name. But if Daimler's engineers can produce even a fraction of what sits in our shop right now — a body that will not rust, an engine with no fire in it, glass that bends like water — then every automobile we have ever built, and every automobile we have dreamt of building, is already obsolete.

I recommend we continue study under the strictest secrecy. I recommend, further, that you not sleep easy tonight.

If this is what Germany already has, Mr. Ford, we are not behind. We are finished.

Respectfully submitted,

*Chief Engineer*

*Special Projects Division*

*Ford Motor Company*

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