When I was young, white families in South Africa often declared themselves supporters of various brands of cars. My father thought that Ford cars were the best. Only the rich could afford Mercedes-Benz and other German cars and so middle-class families were either Ford supporters, GM supporters, Volkswagen supporters or British Leyland supporters, and so on. Consequently, when I was old enough to own a vehicle, Ford cars were my choice. I found them to be reliable, easy to work on, sensible, logical, and so on.

This all changed in 1989. I had a Ford Sierra and had been given great service by it and was very fond of it (in a manly way, naturally). I was driving near Magaliesberg when the engine gave a rattle and died. The car was towed to the nearest Ford dealer in Johannesburg. The following day, they phoned me up to say that the overhead camshaft had broken in two. I was astounded. The only way it could happen was if the cam bearings were seized, and they could only seize if the lubrication system failed, and that was not really likely.

They replaced the overhead cam and, two weeks later, the same rattle, car stopped. I was absolutely flabbergasted. So I went to see them and said how is this possible? They said, well, bring the vehicle in, and they opened it up. And they called me and said, you know what? The cam is broken. In half. So, I said, Okay, fix it. But I am not paying. Oh, they said, really sorry, but we will do the labour for free but you have to pay for the cam. There was nothing I could do. I paid for the cam.

All of this was about six car purchases ago. None of them have been Ford cars. I am not sure what the profit on a car is but, for the price of a camshaft, they lost my trade forever. And my brother. And anybody I tell this story to.

But the reason I am telling it now, to begin with, is that I have just finished reading the autobiography of Henry Ford, the original Ford. I must say upfront that he was no friend of labour and was anti-Semitic in a very big and horrible and unpleasant way. However, one part of his writing really captured me – he said three things.

Firstly, he said that bankers are no friends of business. If a person borrows money from a bank, the bank will set terms and conditions for repayment that will be very difficult for the business to meet and, in fact, will make things worse. It is better, he said, to find other sources of money, other sources of income generation, than to go to bankers. He said that the man (or woman) who has access to banking loans will often rather just use them as against coming up with a decent method of turning the cash flow around.

Secondly, he said that it is better to sell something and make a loss on its sale than to keep the price level and have a workman sitting around, doing nothing. This is because, in the latter case, you are making a loss every single day. Thus, always reduce the price until the product sells – then work out how to reduce the cost of production until you make a profit. This is a big lesson for me: in our consulting practice, we design silencers for large engines. Our silencers are incredibly good. However, very often, people do not use our design services because they perceive them as being too costly. In vain, we point out to them that they can get one of the best silencers in the world. This is because we had an attitude. Now we just price the design on a time basis, regardless of the fact that there is no real competition.

Thirdly, he said that the motto of every businessperson should be ‘The best service at the lowest price’ and not the reverse of this. It resonated with me. And when I think of that Ford dealer of all those years ago, I wonder what went wrong that he did not know this.