Attention, students of the automobile: This rare 1977 CBC film is one of the best documentaries ever made about the Ford Motor Company and North American car culture. Take the time to watch—we promise you will not be disappointed. 

This video is rather long—two segments broken into 30 minutes and 24 minutes each—so we’re not going to take up your time with a big introduction. Produced in 1977 by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and National Film Board of Canada, Henry Ford’s America is not just a sharp and incisive history of the Ford Motor Company. The film also explores the troubled state of the American auto industry in the 1970s and our culture’s conflicted relationship with the automobile in those years. The narrator and director is the celebrated Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain.

There are too many priceless moments and insights to name here, but for starters, you will be treated to rare and candid glimpses of Henry, Edsel, and Henry Ford II, Lee Iacocca, General Motors president Pete Estes… and at several points, even George Barris. But you need to experience this film for yourself. Bookmark this page; view it in multiple sittings if you must; bring refreshments. Watch and be entertained, amazed, and educated. Parts one and two below.