This is very interesting...

"Grandin traces how Ford began escaping into the past by collecting antiques and founding rustic villages in Michigan that evoked the farm community of his childhood. When Brazilian officials dangled land in front of Ford, he saw a chance to begin the world anew. In 1927, Ford snapped up a parcel in the Amazon basin roughly the size of the state of Connecticut. For the next decade or so the father of standardized parts and sparkling factory cleanliness lost millions in an epic battle with the chaos that is the Amazon jungle."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=111297852