The ferry broke down at exactly the wrong moment for everyone except Henry Ford . On June 8, 1909, two stripped-down Ford Model Ts rolled onto a little wooden ferry at Glasgow, Mo., and crossed the Missouri River . The cars were filthy, the men inside them were running on fumes, and a Boston-built Shawmut was closing fast behind them in a cross-country race. Then the ferry quit. The boat that’d just carried the Fords to the western bank suddenly couldn’t return for the Shawmut or the Acme,