It’s just like Yogi Berra said: “I never said most of the stuff I said.” Here are some familiar quotations from noted figures in automotive history—except they never said them. Join us for some fun with car lore. 

We can probably thank the internet for this, but fake quotations have never been more popular. Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln are frequent targets of erroneous quotation, but famous figures in automotive history have also been victimized, most often Henry Ford. Here are a few of the more common false quotes in the automotive world.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. 
-attributed to Henry Ford

Speakers at corporate training seminars adore this quote. It’s the perfect device for illustrating the hazards of taking the task-oriented rather than the goal-oriented approach, and for failing to think outside the proverbial box. The only trouble with the adage, now nearly a cliche: There is no evidence that Ford ever said it, not in any of his books, papers, or recorded materials. In fact, the quotation suddenly pops into the public consciousness in 2002, half a century after Ford’s death.

There are three sports—bullfighting, mountain climbing, and motor racing. All the rest are recreations.  -attributed to Ernest Hemingway

With its swaggering machismo, this familiar quotation sure sounds like classic Hemingway. But in truth, the phrase was created by automotive writer Ken Purdy for a piece of short racing fiction called “Blood Sport” that first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on July 27, 1957. (The story also appears in a collection of his works, Ken Purdy’s Book of Automobiles.) The sentence is uttered by one of the story’s characters, a race driver named Helmut Ovden.

What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.  -attributed to Charles Wilson

When Charles Wilson stepped down as president of General Motors in 1952 to become Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of defense, he took tremendous criticism for telling a congressional committee, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Except that’s not at all what Engine Charlie said. Asked if he could make a decision as defense secretary that could harm General Motors, he answered, “I cannot conceive of one, because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.”  In his term as defense secretary, Wilson never quite managed to live down the twisted quote.

Never complain, never explain.  –attributed to Henry Ford II

This alleged saying of Henry Ford II, grandson of company founder Henry Ford, is often cited to underline the Ford CEO’s aloof and imperious manner. Actually, while HF II did say it, it was a much older quotation thrown to him in 1975 by his public relations manager Walter Hayes, when Ford was arrested for driving under the influence while in the company of a woman who was not Mrs. Ford. A well-educated Englishman and a close friend of Ford, Hayes was quoting Benjamin Disraeli, who twice served as Britain’s Prime Minister.