Claim:   Gangster Clyde Barrow sent a fan letter to Ford in 1934.

Status:   Undetermined.

Origins:   America's first affordable V8-powered car was an automobile introduced in 1932 by the Ford Motor Company, one which quickly grew tremendously popular and received effusive praise from motorists. Of those enthusiastic drivers, none was more famous at the time than the purported writer of this 10 April 1934 letter:

Mr. Henry Ford
Detroit, Mich.

Dear Sir:

While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned, and even if my business hasent been strickly legal it don't hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8.

Yours truly
Clyde Champion Barrow

The authorship of this laudatory missive is still a subject of controversy. Although the item was date-stamped as having been received on 13 April 1934 by Ford and the original is kept on display at the Henry Ford Museum, the handwriting does not appear to match that of a 12 November 1931 letter by Clyde Barrow to his mother. (Indeed, Bonnie Parker's handwriting is a much better match.)

One month later, a quirky repetition occurred when the Ford Motor Company announced it had received the following letter, dated 16 May 1934 and postmarked from Detroit:

Hello Old Pal. Arrived here at 10:00 AM today. Would like to drop in and see you. You have a wonderful car. Been driving it for weeks. It's a treat to drive one. Your slogan should be, drive a Ford and watch the other cars fall behind you. I can make any other car take a Ford's dust!

Bye-bye,
John Dillinger

Unlike the Barrow letter, this latter missive was shown to be a forgery when it was compared with earlier samples of Dillinger's writing. (The hoax was probably based on the mistaken notion that Dillinger had been part of the gang that held up the Citizens Commercial Savings Bank in Flint, Michigan on 18 May 1934. Dillinger was later determined to have been elsewhere at the time.)

The high quality and speed of Ford Motor Company automobiles extolled in these gangsters' letters did not enable them to survive much longer, however. Despite the legendary driving skills that helped John Dillinger to elude capture time and again, he was gunned down by FBI agents while walking outside the Biograph theater in Chicago just 67 days after his putative letter to Ford. In another eerie synchronicity, Clyde Barrow (with his partner in crime, Bonnie Parker) was killed in a firestorm of bullets from a police ambush in Louisiana six weeks after his alleged letter to Ford. Unlike Dillinger, however, Clyde Barrow provided a fitting ending by dying at the wheel of his purloined Ford V8.

Barbara "184 bullet holes — wow, he shouldn't have had a V8" Mikkelson

Last updated:   26 December 2006

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  Sources:

    Nash, Jay Robert and Ron Offen.   Dillinger: Dead or Alive?

    Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1970   (p. 54-55).

    Crimes and Punishments.   Library of Curious and Unusual Facts.

Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1991.   ISBN 0-8094-7711-4   (p. 123).