As the Detroit Free Press wrote of Bugas: When the historians write it down a century from now, they will be dealing with Louis Chevrolet, Walter Chrysler, the Dodge brothers, the Durants, Maxwells and others who put their names on the cars Americans drove or the companies that built them.

By 1938 J. Edgar Hoover appointed him head of the FBI's Detroit office,[12] a strategically very important position as at the time Michigan counted "heavily in the national defense plans.

As war loomed in Europe, concern about possible espionage and sabotage attacks on vital American industries like Detroit's automobile manufacturing plants moved to the forefront.

Guarding the secrets of American technology and manufacturing were crucial to the war, and the Detroit Division played an important role in protecting these critical assets.

"[13] Bugas established a reputation as a "man with unlimited patience and efficiency" in his work on "notorious kidnapping, espionage, bank robbery and other major cases.

"[8] At the FBI, he most notably led the quashing of two Nazi spy rings (including German Countess Grace Buchanan-Dineen, whom Bugas "turned" to a double agent[7]) and personally captured Public Enemy Number One Tom Robinson at gunpoint.

"[9] Bugas was known in the bureau as "an 'agent's agent-in-charge,' a man all like to work for" ("the highest compliment in the service"), always leading his men personally on important cases.

[21] He helped restructure and revitalize the struggling company, which faced considerable financial and strategic challenges transitioning from military manufacturing to a peacetime economy, and by 1956 make it a publicly traded corporation.

The Ford initial public offering was the largest and most oversubscribed the United States had ever seen, raising nearly $700 million — roughly $5 billion in today's terms.

[7] This occurred the same month that Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen was hired as the next president, despite the fact that Bugas was long widely expected to be the successor to the top job.

Fisher, Bugas, and Henry Ford II "were the closest friends amongst Detroit's business elite," as well as frequent poker adversaries.

He is said to have insisted that the spelling of employee conform to current newspaper style," while another story says that his intention was to "save a lot of money in typing and paper costs.

"[27] Bugas would always retain a love for his home state of Wyoming, saying "Its wide, un-cramped spaces ... give me a feeling of personal freedom I have never felt anywhere else.

"[1] Over the years (starting in 1949[20]) he acquired over twenty-thousand-acres[6][7] in Sunlight Basin[28] ("by far the largest private ownership"[20]) and Clark's Fork,[29] within the Absaroka Mountain Range in northwest Wyoming (near what is historically known for being the home of Buffalo Bill).

[5][11] He would spend his time there riding, fishing, and hunting amidst the ranch's twelve-thousand foot mountain peaks, canyons, waterfalls, and rivers.

[20] Bugas loved the area because of its "rugged beauty," and was committed to protecting it "against excessive intrusion by man," keeping it "as wild and isolated" as when he bought it.

[32] Author Loren Estleman wrote that Bugas "exhibited a rough frontier charm that might not have been all artifice, helped along by frank dark eyes slanting away from a nose like the prow of an icebreaker and a shy smile that showed no teeth.

Company scuttlebutt said he was embarrassed by stories about his obstreperous past and had taken steps to eradicate the frontier influence from his manner, including speech lessons.

"[2]) Because of his exploits in fighting the bad guys (while at both the FBI and Ford), Bugas thus "became the consummate hero—legendary to this day"[6]—and earned the reputation as the real life John Wayne, complete with his preferred ascot neckerchief and worn-out hat.

The Detroit Free Press described his enthusiasm for poker, and wrote that the secretive former FBI agent and cowboy "admits playing [his cards] close to his vest.

"[34] In addition to his Wyoming ranches, for the last twenty-five years of his life Bugas's main home was his sprawling country estate in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, which he named Woodland.

[38] (Upon Bugas's death, Woodland was purchased by Max Fisher's close friend and fellow Forbes 400 member Alfred Taubman, and the house was later featured in a Vogue magazine spread.

[39]) Bugas was a significant patron of the University of Wyoming, the Whitney Western Art Museum, and Cranbrook Kingswood, as well as a major Republican Party supporter.

[41] Bugas was a practicing Catholic, and was among the "weighty, prominent list" of financial advisors to the church[42] (and had periodic meetings with Pope John XXIII at Vatican City[43]).

"[48] Bugas led the fight at Ford in 1949 against Walter Reuther's demands for noncontributory pensions for United Auto Workers members by posing the practical argument that increased costs of production cannot simply be passed on (or "shifted forward") to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

"[53]Though the term "consumerism" first appeared in 1915, it was Bugas who first adopted it to illustrate the "consumer sovereignty" concept of Mises, "as a means of contrasting the American economy to that of the Soviet Union.