I’m wrestling with this one. I don’t see all the clues supposedly in the puzzler.
Possible bogus answers:
Ford didn’t have a car in 1898. True, but he had already built and sold one. He could build another.
Inauguration Day back then was March 4 and the letter was dated March 3. Fine, but McKinley was inaugurated in the previous year.
Don’t know if Ford’s first car was a 2 cycle or 4 cycle, or the number of cylinders. I guess that would be a non-bogus answer.
Nevermind, I see it now. There’s only ONE clue in the puzzler.
Henry Fords first car ran on alcohol not gasoline. His first production cars could run on both but he was less enthusiastic about gasoline.
Henry Ford said it best about one hundred years ago. “We can get fuel from fruit from that shrub by the roadside.
Or from apples, weeds, saw-dust almost anything! There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.
There is enough alcohol in one year’s yield of a hectare of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the field for a hundred years. And it remains for someone to find out how this fuel can be produced commercially -
Better fuel at a cheaper price than we know now.”
Henry Ford
Henry Fords prototype ran on pure ethanol
The production Model T and Model A ran on any mixture of ethanol and gasoline.
And that’s what I thought the one clue was. Turns out I was wrong. But I think I should get partial credit. Or maybe not, since I used Wikipedia.